


Revenge of the Mortysnatcher

by Missintroverted



Series: The Misadventures of Ricki Sanchez [2]
Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Trans, Anxiety Attacks, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Dysfunctional Family, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Mental Health Issues, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Not Beta Read, Not Really Character Death, Past Character Death, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:13:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24746626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missintroverted/pseuds/Missintroverted
Summary: Ricki Sanchez finally commits to cleaning up her act. She’s made some progress and has almost started to feel good about her life…until a face-to-face encounter with Rick C-137 sparks an unwanted rivalry between the two.Things quickly spiral out of control, because Rick is determined to do whatever it takes to get the upper hand, even if that means uncovering a dark secret about her Morty that she’d spent years trying to hide. Oh, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, somebody’s kidnapping Mortys again.Talk about Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub, broh.
Series: The Misadventures of Ricki Sanchez [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1782376
Comments: 12
Kudos: 38





	1. Rickflections

**Guess what? I commissioned[ flanexism-draws](https://flanexism-draws.tumblr.com/post/631635155512115200/commission-for-introvert-no-chameleon-another) to make the first scene of this fic because he is awesome and you should totally check out his content. (Is this the second commission I asked of him? Yes. Am I out of control? Possibly. Do I care? No. **

*

If Ricki Sanchez knew what was about to go down, if she’d actually managed to finish that device that predicted multiple outcomes, then maybe she would’ve been able to avoid the massive shitstorm that was to come. Knowing the multiverse, it might have happened anyway, but that didn’t stop her from regretting. After all, wallowing in regret was Ricki’s specialty, alongside ingesting enough alcohol and drugs to kill five horses without breaking a sweat, and walking away from dangerous situations unscratched. Unfortunately for her, those last two things would no longer be true by the end of the month.

The day in question started out well enough. Ricki had taken Morty and Summer on an adventure, and the kids were enthusiastic about having something to do on the weekend. The planet they transported into felt a little bit like a fever dream, with its purple skies and yellow grass. The air had a weird, rotten orange smell that Ricki assured them wasn’t poisonous. Either way, they wouldn’t be here long.

Morty and Summer were chatting behind her, getting more and more excited with every fruit-shaped object that they came across. They were currently on a tangent on how the grass tasted like lemon, the bushes tasted like mint, and shit like that.

Ricki rolled her eyes. They were still so easily excited.

“Hey, grandma. Do you think they have, like, pies growing in the trees or something? All these fruit desserts are making me really want an apple pie.” said Summer. She was currently kneeling down, taking a picture of a jelly rabbit that hopped away the moment it saw her.

“I wouldn’t k-keep tasting stuff on this planet if I were you,” said Ricki. “The s-sugar here is incredibly addictive. It’s like regular sugar, e-except it makes you go insane from the withdrawal.”

Morty, who just picked what looked like some sort of candy apple from a nearby tree, screamed and threw it into the soda river. “W-w-why didn’t y-you s-say something before, Ricki?”

“Relax, it’s only the sugar near the core that really gets you bad,” said Ricki, looking at her tracking device. “S-some idiot on the black market sold me a candy crystal from this planet thinking it was some sort of diamond. If I can just get to this cave, I’ll be able to get some of these bad boys, sell some, and weaponize the powder all for myself.”

“How does that even work?” said Summer, cocking an eyebrow.

“I was—was thinking of a hallucinatory powder, but it’s a work in progress.”

“Ricki,” said Morty in what she began calling his “killjoy tone”, “I-I thought you told Mom you were not going to do this stuff anymore.”

“Don’t be such a fucking mood-killer, M-Morty, Rome wasn’t built in a day. And may I remind you, I haven’t taken you two on anything life-threatening for the last few months. Mostly because I realized that taking you two is more of a risk than a help whenever I need shit done.”

“What about that island with the cannibals last week?” said Morty, crossing his arms.

“That wasn’t my fault, how was I supposed to know that the government there had been overrun by radical cannibals with a surprisingly well-organized militia? Besides, running away from feral humans that want to tear out your flesh is good cardio for, you kids.”

“Yeah, come on Morty,” said Summer. She feigned boredom, probably in an attempt to impress Ricki, but the way she kept drinking in the scenery wasn’t fooling the old scientist. “Don’t be such a _wuss_.”

“See? Summer isn’t bitching,” said Ricki, taking a piece of licorice from a nearby bush and tearing into it, chewing as she spoke. “Besides, your mother just doesn’t want me t-to interrupt your school time. A little bit of trauma is good for you, it toughens you up.”

“Or it drives you crazy. Or gives you PTSD. Or both,” said Morty.

“You know Morty, if you don’t want to go on adventures anymore, then you don’t have to. Grandma would probably prefer me anyway,” said Summer.

Morty scowled at his sister. “H-hey, I’ve been doing this longer than you, Summer!”

“Then stop being such a baby and grow a pair,” she said.

Morty shoved his hands in his pant pockets, muttering to himself as they began making their way to the mouth of a cave.

“If the two o-of you are done fighting about unimportant shit, that’d be great.” Ricki turned on the light attached to the front of her lab coat and handed her grandkids some flashlights. “Oh, uh, heads up, the bats in these caves are carnivorous, so make sure to swat at anything that looks like it's coming from the roof of the cave. They can be real persistent bastards.”

Summer’s footsteps stopped behind them. “Uh, grandma Ricki?”

“What?”

“Do the bats have a natural predator or something, living in this cave?”

“Why do you ask?” said Ricki. She turned around to see her grandkids staring down at one of the little fuckers. Small, purple bats with large mouths were lying belly-up on the floor, with giant gaping holes in their bodies.

Ricki came closer and picked one up by the wing. It smelled like burnt flesh, and the hole in its belly sizzled. “Well, kids,” she said, taking out the blaster from her coat pocket, “Looks like we have company.”

“Aw, jeez, Ricki, is it a monster?”

“Relax, Morty, it’s probably just some idiot with a blaster who thinks they found this place first.”

Morty blinked. “B-but they did.”

Ricki frowned at Morty. “Well, I called d-dibs first, so fuck ‘em.”

“Ooh, grandma Ricki, can we have blasters this time?”

Ricki smirked and tossed one at Summer. “Safety’s off, make sure not to hit your brother o-or I won’t hear the end of it from your mom.”

“No promises,” said Summer, grinning.

Ricki gave Morty his own. “The voltage is set on low. So, relax. Grandma prefers to do the murdering herself.”

Morty sighed and cocked his gun. “I-I just hope they don’t want trouble.”

“Yup, would sure hate to have a standoff,” said Ricki, in the most insincere tone she could muster. “Hate for anything exciting to happen.”

They began making their way further down the cave, where they discovered more and more dead bats littered around them. Eventually, they had to squeeze in a narrow passage one by one, but afterward, they began to see small, pink crystals illuminate the walls.

“Oh, yeah. Momma’s getting close,” said Ricki. “Stay behind me, kids, just in case there’s actually a threat or something. And remember to shoot anybody you see since you won’t kill them, and n-nobody here can make assault charges, so it’s free game.”

“Awesome,” whispered Summer.

Ricki heard voices ahead. She gestured for the kids to stop. The voice sounded familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. Not that it mattered. Ricki put her finger on her lips.

They nodded.

She turned her attention back to the entrance of the cavern. With a single movement, she came out of cover, blaster raised. “Alright, motherfuckers, hands, tails, and/or tentacles where I can see them...oh.”

A Morty threw his hands, eyes wide with fear. He was a standard Morty, with a yellow t-shirt, short, brown curly hair, shorts, and big deer-in-the-headlights eyes, staring right at the barrel of Ricki’s weapon. “Wait! D-don’t shoot!”

Ricki hesitated. Wherever there was a Morty, there would be a Rick. She scanned her surroundings. Large, bright neon pink crystals were jutting from the walls around her, and some loomed over their heads.

She heard her Morty scream Summer curse behind her and twirled around to see the barrel of a blaster straight in front of her face. Ricki kept hers aimed towards the Rick’s head. “I can’t believe I feel for the old ‘Morty bait’ trick.”

He scoffed. “P-put it down, princess, or—urrrp—I-I’ll f-fry your grandkids into t-the next non-existent life.” He gestured towards where Summer and Morty had stood.

They were tangled in a large net, an invention which she instantly recognized. “Really? Electric net? Wow, I-I didn’t know we were living 20 years ago.”

The Rick narrowed his eyes at her. He held up a remote. “Yeah, well it’ll be enough to melt their b-brains until it l-leaks out of their ears.”

Ricki dropped the gun. She put her hands up.

The Rick smirked. “M-Morty, g-get the blaster.”

The kid walked over, frowning. “Sorry.” He picked it up.

In less than a second, Ricki grabbed the kid around the waist, pinning his arms around him tightly. She kept her left hand in the air, showing Rick the metal ring on her middle finger. The ring beeped, and both his blaster and his remote flew in her direction. She grabbed it mid-air and crushed the remote under her heel.

The kids started untangling themselves from the net.

“One move and I put a hole in his skull!” she said, glaring at the Rick. As if to punctuate, she placed the muzzle on the side of the Morty’s head. 

To her surprise, the Rick just crossed his arms. “Then g-go right ahead.”

Ricki blinked. “ _What_?” She’d expected this, but it didn’t mean she liked hearing it.

“Sh-shoot the little f-fucker. Y-you’d be d-doing me a favor. The little shit’s been complaining all day.”

The Morty began to writhe. His face grew red. “Rick! C-cut the crap!”

The man shrugged. “Sorry, Morty, b-but the Citadel did give me that fr-free Morty r-replacement ticket.”

The Morty squirmed harder in Ricki’s grip, forcing her to loop her arm around his neck to try and pacify him. The kid was _seething_. “I can’t b-belive y-you, Rick! Y-you b-blew them up, asshole!”

Rick groaned like a teenager who’d just been asked to sweep the floor. “Morty, y-y-you stupid fuck, h-h-have you learned n-nothing?”

Ricki felt her blood run cold. She realized, very quickly, who she was dealing with. She tightened her grip on the blaster. “Rick C-137.”

C-137 burped. “Y-yup, that’s me. C-could’t stand the sight of y-you b-boot-licking Citadel Ricks all over the place. B-blowing the place u-up was the best high I’ve had in a looong time.” He raised his unibrow as he took out a silver flask and drank from it. “Also I kn-know for a fact you’re not gonna b-blow the idiot’s brains out, so stop embarrassing yourself.”

Ricki’s jaw tightened. She amped up the power on her blaster, the sound of its charge ringing through the cavern. “Try me.”

“Rick!” screamed the Morty.

“D-drop the gun!”

Her Morty and Summer both had their weapons aimed at Rick, who glanced at them in irritation, as if he’d just spotted a pair of flies buzzing around his head.

“Yeah, bitch,” came Summer’s voice, louder. “Hands up or we aim for that bald spot in the middle of your head!”

Rick glared at his Morty, pulling his hands up. “Oh, w-wow, a second-rate Morty and a Summer. I am so overwhelmed right now. I-I bet they couldn’t shoot s-something three feet in front of them.”

Ricki hesitated, staring down at the Morty, then at the Rick. Then she let go of the boy.

The kid scurried away from her, clearly dumbfounded.

“Morty, S-summer. We’re leaving,” she said, tucking the blaster in her pocket.

“ _What_?” Summer looked at Rick C-137 as if expecting him to grow another head. “Grandma, you have him on the ropes!”

Even C-137 was confused. He narrowed his eyes at her. “Okay, I-I knew y-you weren’t going to kill my Morty, but what the fuck’s with a-all this weak-ass retreating?”

Ricki took in his profile. He had the standard Rick body, sickly greyish skin, bloodshot eyes, and he currently had some bile on his bottom lip like she used to have before giving up on alcohol. Nothing to distinguish him from any other Rick, but she knew damn well what he could be capable of.

_She flashed back to blood, and pieces of flesh strewn everywhere on concrete, there was sobbing and screaming, so much of it, ringing in her ears…_

Ricki swallowed, forcing the memory down. “Shut up, turn around a-and listen to grandma for once in your fucking lives. It isn’t worth it.”

“Hold up,” said the Rick, putting his flask away, “Who said you could leave? A-as if you’re not gonna…gonna get reinforcements or some shit.”

Ricki pressed her lips together. “Don’t l-live in the Citadel, don’t give a shit what you do.”

Rick narrowed his eyes. “Likely story.” He pulled out another weapon and fired.

Ricki raised up a shield that made the laser fizzle out as soon as it made contact with it. She tossed a smoke bomb on the ground, filling the entire chasm with white smoke. Taking advantage of the confusion, she swept a leg from under C-137, causing him to fall on his ass, and ran over to where her grandkids were. Then, after a second thought, she pulled two large, circular rings out of her pocket.

A whirring echoed throughout the cave, and the smoke was cleared away by a large fan Rick C-137 produced from his watch.

Ricki threw her cuffs at Rick, which he side-stepped. “Ha!”

She smiled, holding a finger over her touch-screen watch. With the press of the button, coils wrapped around Rick and Morty C-137.

“You _octo-coiled_ me?” he said, struggling against them only for them to tighten. “Then you have the balls to call _me_ old-school!”

“For the record,” she said, “I hated those stuck-up pricks, so thanks for g-getting rid of them for me.” Ricki glanced down at her watch. “The octo-coils with release the two of you in about half an hour. Just a reminder, i-if you struggle, they’ll crush your balls, and then render you unconsciousness.”

Morty C-137 stayed completely still as soon as she finished speaking, nervous eyes darting around to look at the trap they were in.

Rick grit his teeth. “Y-yeah? Just you wait till I get out of here. I’ll send your limbs into different dimensions—.” As if on cue, the metallic coils tightened around him. “ _OhsweetJesusthathurts_!”

Ricki had already begun walking away. “Sure.” She took a large chunk of crystal from the wall and stuffed it in a coat. “Good luck with that.” She shot a portal into the ground. Morty and Summer jumped in, and she followed.

As soon as they landed onto their garage floor, Ricki went to put the crystal in a large vial. The garage was just as she’d left it; average-sized, filled with shelves and boxes overfilling with tools and inventions. Over the past few months, Ricki had negotiated with Jerry to make space for his tools as long as he didn’t wander into the lab under the garage or touch her shit. He agreed on the condition that she either stole electricity from somebody else or made her own. “And don’t tell me which one you do,” he’d said, glancing over his shoulder, “I don’t want to be your accomplice if anybody finds out.”

Anyway, he spent most of his time in front of the television instead of bothering to make himself useful, so Ricki basically had the garage to herself.

“What was _that_ all about?” said Summer, hands on her hips, “You totally could’ve taken him!”

Ricki pushed back some stray hairs that had gotten out of place behind her ear. She slapped on a pair of goggles and began adjusting the settings until she could see a list of the crystal’s physical properties. “Summer, that was Rick C-137.”

“So?” asked Summer, hand on her hips.

“Remember how I told you that there are countless Ricks in the multiverse?” she said, rubbing her temple as a migraine began throbbing behind it. “Well, that Rick single-handedly destroyed the Citadel of Ricks _and_ his reality’s version of the Galactic Federation in less than an hour. The shit that psychopath does on a daily basis makes my crimes look like child’s play.”

“Aw, jeez, Ricki. What kind of things?” said Morty.

Rick leaned on her desk. “Just o-off the top of my head? Uh, enslaving an entire universe, genocide, and indirectly killing hundreds of Ricks and Mortys. Also, he’s a planet-fucker, which is just weird, even by Rick standards. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

“The hell?” Morty furrowed his eyebrows. “H-how do you fuck a planet?”

“M-Morty, some things are better off unanswered,” she said.

Summer cocked an eyebrow at Ricki. “You’re telling us that _you_ never did any of those things?”

Ricki scoffed, turning around to face Summer. “H-hey, I’ve killed enough people and aliens to populate a modestly-sized planet’s population, but I’ve never committed fucking _genocide_. That’s just messed up, and it would make it incredibly difficult to sympathize with my character enough to want a proper redemption arc. We’re trying to do Anti-Villain to Anti-Hero here.”

“What are you talking about?” said Summer.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “B-besides, I don’t kill kids. Especially not M-Mortys. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”

Summer bit her lip. “Do you think he’ll try to come after you?”

Ricki sat down on her desk chair. “I wouldn’t w-worry about it. It’s not as if I have anything he wants.”

Summer didn’t seem satisfied with Ricki’s answer. “Do you mean that, or are you just saying that so we don’t think about it?”

“Let me ask you this, Summer;” said Ricki. “Will my answer do anything to change the fact that you’re just going to go inside, spend hours of your life scrolling social media, and cyber-stalking your pointless crush of the month?”

Summer paused, mulling it over. “Okay, point taken.” She took out her cellphone and went into the house, her fingers texting at an impressive rate.

Morty followed his older sister up to the doorframe. He paused. “Hey, um, Grandma Ricki?”

“Hm?”

“Uh, I. I just wanted to say. I-I think y-you handled that pretty well.” He laughed nervously. “I really thought you were going to kill that…that Rick.”

Ricki shrugged. “I already t-told you, it wasn’t worth it.”

Her grandson opened his mouth as if to say more, then closed it. He cleared his throat. “I guess not.” Morty went into the house, closing the door behind him.

Ricki stared at the crystal in the vial, drumming her fingers on the desk. When she couldn’t hear footsteps anymore, she sagged in her chair.

“Damn it.”

She jerked her drawer open took out her lighter and a pack of cigarettes. She lit one, taking in the sweet nicotine, then she exhaled. Beth would say something once she caught the smell, but they both knew it was better than drinking from her flask. For a while she just watched every lazy trail of smoke from her every exhale rise until it disappeared.

It wasn’t her fault that the encounter with C-137 had her so on edge. It was a bad sign, crossing paths with _that_ Rick, of all the damn Ricks in the multiverse.

When the Council had called her to look through “Evil Rick”’s file, she noticed that he had sorted all the Ricks by their “evilness”. He judged this by putting three major factors into account. The first was a list of crimes each Rick had committed in their lifetime. The second was the level of compassion (or lack of) each one possessed. It’d had all been disturbingly detailed. The bastard had known about shit she’d done even before she had registered her portal gun. He hadn’t gotten everything, but it still unnerved her none the less.

The last factor was the number of dimensions they’d destroyed and left behind. The amount of Ricks who had done this was a lot less than she’d expected. Even the ones who had usually only messed up one or two realities beyond repair. C-137 had messed up at least _five_ of them.

The files couldn’t confirm whether or not his Morty came from his original universe, but one thing was certain. C-137 had an endless capacity for cruelty that even made _her_ stomach twist, and she once left an accomplice of hers to rot in a jail somewhere in Colombia with the local cartel hot on his heels.

Despite what she’d told Summer, she knew it wouldn’t be over. He was smarter than most Ricks, which was one of the reasons they’d hated the shit out of him. And very soon, she’d learn if he was smarter than her too.

*

Her next meeting with Rick C-137 happened when the family had been out on some wine and chocolate tasting convention. Beth’s co-worker had gifted her tickets for her birthday, and thankfully she hadn’t gotten with for Ricki. Of course, Beth had insisted on buying a ticket for her, but when Ricki pointed out that taking a recovering alcoholic to a wine convention would be counter-productive, Beth had quickly dropped the subject. Which had been a good call, since C-137 literally walked out of a portal in the garage in the middle of the day, only an hour after the family drove off.

The turrets she had in place immediately pointed at his portal before he even stepped out of it. Ricki pretended not to be alarmed by his presence. She’d given in and taken a few sips from her flask if only to have something stronger to calm her nerves. It was doing something, since she was managing to keep tinkering with a small microchip, back turned to him, her body language relaxed. Sure, her mind felt fuzzy, but she welcomed the relief like an old friend.

“Uh, I-I know y-you heard the portal, _D-312-A_.” The sneer in his tone wasn’t lost on her.

She straightened her back and swiveled her chair to face him. “C-137. Took y-you long enough to find me. W-what, were you too busy s-snorting crystal dust?”

“Ha, ha. Hi—urrrp—larious. The comeback of t-the century.” He gestured at the turrets currently pointing at his head. “Geez, t-talk about overkill.”

“I d-don’t like people waltzing into my lab,” she said. “And o-obviously, I don’t trust you not to try and blow my head off my shoulders.”

He glanced at the nearest one. “I-impressive, for a me that isn’t me.” He waved his hand in front of it, watching as it followed his every movement.

Ricki glared at him. “I’m not Rick anymore.”

“H-hate to break it to you, but your still jumping dimensions, still running around with a Morty, a Summer and still wearing a…a lab coat, so.”

“My name is Ricki,” she snapped. “Rick is my dead name. Call me that…that again and I’ll rip your goddamn dick off and beat y-you to death with it.”

Rick’s eyes widened as if just putting two and two together. He put his hands up defensively. “O-oh, I get it. My bad, I, uh, don’t see a lot of—”

“Don’t give a shit,” she snapped.

“Yeah, l-look, I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a transphobe. A-actually, I slept with a lot of trans partners, I really don’t discriminate. Th-that would just be crossing a line.”

Ricki rolled her eyes. “Good to know there’s one line you haven’t crossed yet.”

Rick raised half of his unibrow. “Yeah, my bad, y-you obviously must have the moral high ground, considering you were also after the crystals. I’m sure it was to cure cancer and feed all the hungry children in the world.”

Instead of replying, Ricki drank the rest of the contents of her flask. She immediately regretted it. She went into a coughing fit. The drink burned her throat a little too much for comfort. Either she had put in the strong stuff, or her time being sober had really messed with her tolerance. Did this always taste so goddamn bad? Catching her breath, she wiped the spit off her chin. “Ugh. W-what d-d-do you w-want, anyway?”

Rick C-137 looked her up and down, and she could see the gears turning in his head. “W-what the hell is up with you? Do-do you not drink?”

“What are you, m-my t-therapist?” she said. “I-I y-you’re here t-to—urp—criticize my life choices, then fuck off.”

C-137 pressed a few buttons on his own version of her watch. In a second, all the turrets around them powered down. He stepped into her personal space. “Y-you left with something that was mine.”

She scoffed. “Are you serious? You h-have the entire cavern full of those crystals.”

“Yeah, w-well, tough titties. I-I don’t settle for second best. I called dibs since yesterday.”

“I c-called dibs since last week, so too bad.”

They were staring each other down, the tension palpable.

The scent of unwashed clothes and bile filled her nostrils. She backed off, disgusted. _Fuck, is that what I used to smell like? Christ._ “Are y-you seriously here because of a piece of the crystal? Because I-I smell bullshit. And v-vomit.” Ricki folded her arms in front of her chest.

“Ugh, obviously. I-I can j-jack the prices u—rrrr—ppp even higher if I’m the only supplier.”

Ricki took deep breaths, taking each moment to remind herself of who she was dealing with. He was baiting her, trying to see what made her tick. Ricki was above that now, thank you very much. Just because some cocky Rick with a bigger god complex than she had waltzed in her own lab after she’d not only spared his Morty, but given him the fruits of three months of labor, it didn’t mean it was worth endangering her entire dimension.

“Fine,” she spat. “I-I’ll hand it over, as long as you d-don’t come back. I re-read your file, and I-I don’t need y-you fucking things up around here.”

Rick, who had held an almost uninterested expression for the most part of the conversation, perked up. “S-so you decided to be intelligent enough not to e-end up like the other Ricks. I-I have to hand it to you. Y-y-you may be a coward, but at least you’re smart enough to acknowledge y-your inferiority.”

Ricki’s jaw tightened. She clenched and unclenched her hands. Then she forced a smile. “Sure.” She casually pulled out her portal gun and began typing in some coordinates. “Why don’t you go a-and get it?”

There were times in Ricki’s life when, despite her intelligence, her temperament ended up getting the best of her. Times like the one now, where it felt like her body acted in its own. So when she turned and zapped a portal under the vial, watching as the object feel in, a tiny part of her brain, the part that probably had what was left of her good judgment, screamed at her for being such a stupid, predictable, _moron_.

But the damage was done. The green, swirling portal closed in on itself seconds after it opened.

A moment passed where C-137 just stared, stone-faced, at the place where the crystal used to be. Then he looked back at Ricki, and took out a blaster. “You think I can’t just f-follow the coordinates?”

“Try all you want, it’s already b-been erased. I couldn’t get them back if I wanted to.”

Rick smirked at her. “Obviously, _you_ wouldn’t. Now, since I’m so nice, I’ll go easy on you and forget this every happened if you hand me your portal gun.”

Ricki grit her teeth. “Or you can try prying the gun from my cold, dead hands.”

He grinned in a way that no sane person would, with too wide of a smile, brimming with excitement and madness. He aimed his weapon. “Gladly.”

Ricki lunged at him. She grabbed his arms, a stray beam hitting a shelf behind her. At least they had about the same physical strength, or else she’d be really screwed. C-137 couldn’t shake her off, even when pushing her so that her hips smacked the hard edge of her desk. She hissed between her teeth, but she held on tight. They struggled, Rick to get her off him, Ricki to hold his arms back.

Rick kicked her stomach. Ricki coughed, and spit on Rick’s eye. He quickly bit down on her arm, and she jabbed him in the knee with her foot.

They both reared their heads back and head-butt the other. Ricki immediately felt an explosion of pain, colors blooming in the back of her eyelids. She staggered back, ass hitting the floor. She was sure he’d just cracked her fucking skull.

Rick smiled down at her, tapping his forehead. “Metallic plating. Got a nice upgrade after my last body died.”

She threw up on the floor next to her. The pain began to feel unbearable, but she’d be dammed if she lost now. Ricki quickly tossed a small disk at him that stuck to his coat.

It fell right off it like water off a duck’s feathers. “Nice try,” he pointed a blaster at it, “But I'm not f-uurrrpp—falling for that twice.”

He shot it. It crackled with energy.

“Shit,” he said.

Ricki flipped him off a split second before the device electrocuted him. She grabbed a nearby wrench, fighting against the headache combined with his screaming. She reared her arm back the throw it, but C-137 was faster. He took the wrench in his grip, and she screamed as electric currents went through her body. She flopped onto the ground, tasting ozone in her burnt, dry tongue, gasping for air.

Nearby, she heard C-137 do the same, then retch, and the sound of something spilling all over the floor. She scrunched her nose, the air overpowered with the acid-smell of vomit. She clutched her stomach, and also emptied whatever had been left inside of it.

After finishing, she crumpled up in the fetal position, groaning.

While she did feel miserable, it did make her feel better to see C-137 still convulsing on the floor like a dying fish. Ricki began dragging herself towards his body, but eventually, her elbow gave in after a few inches.

“F-fuck, alright.” He weakly held his arms up. “Time-out, cease-fire, uncle, whatever, I-I can feel my fucking exoskeleton still vibrating over my spine.”

Ricki couldn’t bother to lift her head off the cool concrete, so she just grunted. “Fine by me…”

She suddenly heard the rustle of a lab coat and forced herself to look up just in time to see C-137 get back up on his feet with the biggest shit-eating grin she’d ever seen.

Fuck.

“…or that’s what I would’ve said, _bitch_! Th-that’s right, system reboot, motherfucker!” he said, dancing around her body in what had to be one of the most embarrassing moments of her life.

Ricki weakly pulled at his lab coat, forcing every cell in her body to at least give her one boost of adrenaline to choke the cocky bastard to death, but no avail. She had _really_ chosen a bad week to start drinking again.

He frisked her portal gun from her with ease. He was still laughing like a cartoon supervillain, and by this point, it had gone past infuriating to annoying. He pressed some buttons, and in a matter of moments, a new portal appeared behind him.

“Oops,” he said, dropping her portal gun just in her reach. He then stepped on her outstretched hand.

She cried out as the bone snapped. “Fuck you, that’s just _petty_.”

“ _Duh_. It’s m-me we’re talking about.” He walked into the portal and waved at her. “Hasta la vista, asshole!” The portal closed after he went through it.

Ricki had expected a lot of outcome from this encounter, but none had ended with her lying in vomit smelling like vomit and burnt flesh. She dragged herself up to her chair, pulled out a capsule from her drawer, busted it open, and inhaled. Most of the pain washed away, although the throbbing behind her forehead persisted.

Only after she was able to pull herself together did Ricki take in all the carnage around her, then her broken hand. She winced. Her bone was exposed, and flaps of skin barely hung onto it. She’d have to spend the rest of the afternoon fixing that, which meant her entire day free of Jerry’s idiocy, and Beth’s screaming, and Morty’s and Summer’s teenage drama, would be wasted.

She thought about the Meeseeks box, but after the Incident, she’d locked it in a vault on another planet, which was also in another dimension. Not to mention, she had no idea what C-137 had done to her gun, so she couldn’t risk it. The last thing she needed was to implode and give him the satisfaction of causing her death.

She took a big breath in. Then out.

“Oh, I’m so _fucked_.”

*

Rick was in the middle of gloating about his recent win to Morty after dragging the kid to find the crystal Ricki had dropped in the butt dimension. It hadn’t taken long to find, even with Morty complaining about the smell every second of the way. Usually, even Rick would have commented on it, but the satisfaction of not only getting it, but the memory of his opponent rendered helpless on her lab floor, overpowered the awful miasma of shit smell

The two of them were now riding in his spaceship, the acquired crystal sitting in a box on the back seat. The great expanse of space surrounded them, millions of stars going by in a blur as they flew past them. Rick remembered when all of it used to excite him when he’d park in the middle of it all so he could stare at all the stars and planets for hours. Now, it all felt as mesmerizing as the concrete sidewalk in front of his house, so common it wasn’t even worth taking a moment to acknowledge.

Morty, as per usual, had that constipated look on his face that he had whenever he didn’t agree with what Rick was doing, which seemed to be a lot more common as of late.

“Aw, jeez, Rick. Why’d you have to g-go do that? S-s-she seemed r-really nice.”

Rick sighed. “Morty, y-you’re really—urrrrp—k-killing the mood here.”

Morty glared at him, crossing his arms. “Y-you can be a real prick, you know that? Just because you hate other Ri…Ricks.”

“Uh, first of all, _Morty_ , she isn’t a Rick anymore, her name is Ricki. What are you, a tra-transphobe?”

Morty threw his hands up in exasperation. “I-I didn’t know! And you’re trying to change the subject!”

Rick swerved sharply to the right, throwing Morty off balance and causing his face to slam against the window. The kid peeled his face off the glass, glowering at Rick.

“Watch out, Morty, you really ought to put on your seatbelt,” said Rick, in the most sarcastic tone he could manage.

“What the hell is your deal?”

“Look, Morty, there’s _obviously_ something up here. I mean, wh-what kind of R…person that used to be a Rick…gives a shit about another Morty? Obviously, she's trying to hide something behind that nice act.”

“Or maybe she’d just _nice_ ,” said Morty. “And you can’t accept that because it would mean that you’d have to live with the fact that y-you’re capable of change, but you just won’t try to.”

Rick blew a raspberry. “W-wow, Morty, well done. You really got me, you should b-be your family’s new therapist. Maybe you can also get paid to do n-nothing for an hour except talk about feelings.”

“Screw you, Rick. What _really_ makes you so sure she’d hiding s-something, huh?”

“It’s very simple, Morty,” he said, as their Earth came in sight. “Now pay attention, because I don’t want you to get lost when grandpa explains it to you. Each Rick and Morty have certain—certain characteristics, right? A-and, whatever changed they have in appearance, rule of thumb is that they share it.”

“Are you seriously saying there’s something wrong because—”

“No, _Morty_ , it’s not because she wasn’t running around with a version of you that was a girl, I’m talking about t-the freckle.”

Morty blinked. He wasn’t glaring anymore, and Rick knew he had his complete attention. “What are you talking about, Rick?”

“The freckle, Morty. T-the one on that Morty’s cheek?”

“Uh. Okay? So?”

Rick sighed. “She didn’t have one, which means she doesn’t match her Morty. And I’m betting a lot of money on the fact that something happened to her first Morty, and i-it probably wasn’t an early entrance into Harvard.”

The spaceship had successfully entered the planet’s atmosphere, and they were now floating over the neighborhood. The sun was setting, and their neighbors were going back to their dull, mundane lives, and houses.

Morty finally seemed to understand, his forehead creasing. “I dunno, Rick. You might be reaching a little far, don’t y-you think?”

Rick parked the spaceship, stopping so that they both lurched forward in their seats. “What, haven’t you learned anything? When—when have I been wrong about this stuff, huh?”

Morty shrugged, detaching his seatbelt. “Whatever, Rick. You’re going to do what you want, a-and I don’t want to be a part of it this time. I’m not helping you hurt someone for no reason. Not again.”

Rick was taken aback. He had expected more snark, but Morty was already inside the house, leaving him alone. The garage suddenly felt cold and hollow.

He shook his head and pushed those feelings far down, where they wouldn’t bother him. Fuck Morty. He’d show him.

Rick grabbed the box and flipped it open, already remembering the sweet, sweet victory that had come with—

Wait.

The so-called crystal was nothing but a melted lump. Rick put his pinky in it and put it in his mouth. He rolled the contents around his tongue. That planet’s crystals shouldn’t have a flavor, just a sharp, intense buzzing sensation on the tip of his tongue. But this was…

“Strawberry flavor. Huh.” He shut the box and leaned back in his seat.

Something stirred inside of him, fueling him with a renowned vigor. That familiar adrenaline, sharp and electric, surged through him. He hadn’t felt this eager to fuck somebody else’s shit up in a while, and it had been even longer since someone had actually managed to pull a fast one on him.

“That sly _motherfucker_.”

Oh, this was going to be more fun than he thought.

*

By the time the family came home, Ricki had managed to clean up the evidence of her encounter. The only thing that gave away the fact that anything had occurred were the bandages on her hand, but that wouldn’t raise too much suspicion. Ricki gave herself injuries like that all the time with her experiments.

She’d fortified the shields around the household to interfere with any portals that didn’t come from her portal gun, and re-programmed the turrets. She had also fixed the portal gun itself. Apparently, C-137 had rigged it to send her to the dimension of disembodied heads that never stopped screaming. It took her all evening just to re-wire it. She’d at least taken advantage of the situation by giving it a much-needed upgrade. 

Her thoughts were interrupted by Beth, who lightly knocked on the garage door. “Is it safe for me to come in?”

“Yup,” said Ricki.

Beth opened the door, a small, nervous smile on her lips. Her blonde hair was up in a messy bun on the top of her head, and she seemed relaxed, which meant she’d probably just been drinking. “Hey, Dad. Just checking up on you.”

The subject of whether or not they’d still call Ricki ‘Dad’ had been an awkward, uncomfortable conversation that Ricki had almost wanted to erase from her memory. Beth had said she wouldn't mind changing it to “Mom”, but her stiff shoulders and the long pauses between words had said otherwise.

Ricki didn’t blame her. Diane hadn’t abandoned her as Ricki did. It wouldn’t be fair to use the same word that Beth used for the woman who raised her. Besides, at the end of the day, she didn’t have an issue with it.

“You mean, you’re making sure I’m not getting pissed drunk since you all left me alone in the house all day.”

Beth frowned. “I just want to check up on you, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well maybe don’t come in smelling like you drank three crates of wine. I can smell the Monet from here.” Ricki’s stomach twisted uncomfortably. The only other thing about her interruption was the fact that the thought of drinking made her recall the horrible beatdown and consequent vomiting that occurred afterward. Maybe she’d give her local Alcoholics Anonymous a call later to share her breakthrough.

Beth cleared her throat, her cheeks going red. “Er, right. Sorry, Dad. I…um. These are for you.” She placed a box of chocolates on the desk. “I know you like the milk chocolate ones.”

Ricki took the box and popped one into her mouth. The candy melted in her mouth, and the taste felt amazing. Which, in turn, made Ricki horrible. A shitty day wasn’t an excuse for her to fall back into old patterns. She’d already slipped more than twice today.

“Look, sorry, sweetie. I didn’t mean to be an ass. I. Um. Appreciate it.”

It felt strange, being at a place where she could admit to being an ass as opposed to just letting the situation escalate, then drinking herself stupid with regret and alcohol hours later. Maybe her therapy sessions with Wong were finally paying off (not that she’d ever admit that).

Beth smiled, and it was so earnest and happy it did something painful to Ricki’s chest. “I’m just proud of you for, you know. Trying.”

“Beth, we both know I’ve been smoking.”

“Well yeah, but that still beats cocaine.”

“I have _really_ set the bar low, haven’t I?”

Beth snickered. “Oh, yeah. But I still mean it, you know. Anyway, I also came to tell you that we brought pizza.”

“Sounds good. I’ll be there i-in five, just wrapping something up.”

“Okay. Don’t take too long.”

The door closed again. Ricki took out another chocolate and carefully closed the little box. She then stared at the crystal she’d kept hidden. She’d grinded it into a fine powder, and had been in the process of making a list of potential sellers when Beth walked in.

Ricki ran hands through her hair. Since her transformation, she’d let it grow, and it reached a little past her shoulders now. After staring at the list for at least a few minutes, Ricki got up from her chair. She punched a combination of the safe under her desk and placed the dust inside of it.

She’d hold off for now. Ricki had bigger fish to fry, anyway.

*

Come and bother me on my [Tumblr](https://introvert-no-chameleon.tumblr.com/). I crave attention and validation!


	2. Ricks and Stones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What,” said Ricki, tossing the ring away from them, “A-are you going to do the entire fucking hostage bit? You don’t have the decency to at least point a gun at my face?”
> 
> “Hey, it’s my hostage situation, asshole. The next time you h-have one, you can handle it however you want. Besides, I’m pointing a metaphorical gun at you by e-endangering your grandkids. Now hands up.”
> 
> *  
> Ricki and C-137 have their showdown, but nothing goes as planned for either of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is when things get violent, and there is also a brief mention of a panic attack, so if that stuff isn't your jam, you may not want to keep reading. If that stuff doesn't bother you, then read on, broh!

“Wh-what’s going on, Rick? Why’d you call us out here?”

Morty and Summer stood, arms crossed in Rick’s underground lab. The lab was illuminated by the green glow of his computer monitors and the bright pink coming from the crystals. Unlike the garage, where prying eyes could see what he was doing, the underground lab had his more… _controversial_ experiments.

The space was dimly lit and housed most of his current projects, like the clone chamber he’d made again after he re-started Operation: Phoenix, various chemicals that were outlawed in at least 74 galaxies, and a few neutrino bombs, to name a few. Only the specimens and experiments that weren’t able to be contained in Earth’s atmosphere where moved, most of them in one of his hidden labs across the universe.

“Yeah,” said Summer, barely staring up from her cellphone. “You never invite us to your creepy science dungeon, especially not after Mom and Dad found out about the alien you kept here. So obviously, you want something from us.”

“Perceptive a-as ever, Summer,” said Rick, grinning at her from where he stood. “Always good to see your father’s genes haven’t—urrp—ruined you.”

“Cut to the chase, Rick,” said Morty.

Rick glared at his grandson. “Well, M-Morty, since you asked, I need you and Summer to come with me to retrieve the crystal that this fucker…” He projected a mug shot of Ricki onto the screen. “Has taken.”

Morty groaned, rubbing his face. “Rick, a-a-are you for real? W-we already took it back.”

Rick shoved the box in front of the two kids on his desk. “Did we Morty? Look a-again.”

Morty huffed as he approached the box. He opened it, then poked the now lumpy candy with a finger. The boy winced as some of it stuck to his skin. “Ew.”

“Grandpa, what does expired carnival candy and a female version of you have to do with us?” said Summer, in that tone that teens always used whenever they thought they were too good for something. “Did one of your clones, like, gain sentience and go _Bladerunner_ , or something?”

“None of my clones ever go _Bladerunner_ , Summer, I have a contingency plan for that,” said Rick. “She’s from dimension D-312-A, and she interrupted me and Morty when we were in the middle of farming these bad boys. Then she octo-coiled us after threatening to shoot Morty—”

“Stop pretending that’s the part you care about,” said Morty, deadpan.

“ _Ahem._ As I was saying, she got away with taking a crystal chunk, after I c-called dibs,” he said, before his grandson could snark again.

Sumer looked at the candy chunk, then at Rick, then back at the candy. “Are you seriously telling me that you want petty revenge just because she took one piece of those weird glorified glow-sticks?”

“I-I-It’s the _principal_ of the thing, Summer! She crossed and humiliated me, and now she’s going _down_. Like way down. Like, I’m going to make her more obsolete than Jessie McCartney’s career after the early 2000’s.”

“You already beat the crap out of her, Rick. I-isn’t that enough? Y-you don’t even know if she’s selling her stuff. A-and it probably won’t even be in—in the same dimension! You’re fucking _insane_ ,” said Morty.

Rick jabbed a finger at his grandson’s chest. “Look, cut the high-road act, Morty, you owe me after making me have to go through an interdimensional episode of _Groundhog Day_ j-just because you wanted your dumb high-school crush to love you. I-I dealt with fascist shrimp, Morty. _Fascist shrimp_!”

Morty winced, and Rick knew he’d hit a nerve. The kid stared down at his shoes, shoulders hunched. “Fine. Wh-what’s your stupid plan anyway?”

“Simple,” he said, leaning back on his desk, “Y-you and your sister are going to deal with her cheap, bootleg versions so that I can get my sweet, sweet vengeance. Sh-she has a weak spot for kids, s-so she won’t try to hurt you two.”

“Hold on, what makes you think I want anything to do with this crap? I don’t owe you anything,” said Summer. “If anything, you owe _me_ after abandoning me on that weird face-hugger planet.”

“If you help, then I’ll let you get high off some of these crystals,” he said, gesturing to the packet of powder he had on his desk.

Summer perked up, immediately abandoning her phone. She hovered to the shiny powder like a moth to a flame. “Is it like, more intense than human drugs?”

“Waaay more,” he said, stretching his arms out for emphasis.

“Rick, you said you could go insane from getting high off those!” said Morty, pulling Summer away from the powder.

“What, a-and you think I don’t have a cure for that?” snapped Rick. “The worse that’ll happen is that she’ll get a small buzzing noise in the back of her skull for a few days afterward.”

“Sounds good enough for me, I’m in,” said Summer, grinning.

“Y-you’re really going to let some drugs convince you to help Rick beat up an innocent old lady?”

Rick sighed. He went to the keyboard in front of the monitor and started typing until he came to the file he wanted. “Y-you really believe that, huh? Hate to break it to ya Morty, but my friend, video evidence, says otherwise.” He made sure both Summer and Rick were watching as he pressed play.

The screen blinked. Two gloved hands, as skinny as Rick’s, but about thirteen years younger, came into view. One held onto the wooden railing of a staircase that lead up to the second floor of what looked exactly like the inside of the Smith family house. It was so quiet they could hear someone breathing.

“What…is this you?” said Morty.

“No, idiot, that’s D-132-A,” he said. “Before she had a body change. She’s in universe Delta-5, b-by the way. I know none of y-you asked, but I wanted to make this easier on the audience, y’know, with all these Ricks running around. Now shut up, I fast—urp—forwarded all the boring shit so we could skip to the good part.”

Ricki quietly, one step at a time, went up until she came to the hallway. She glanced at the wall, and the three of them were treated to some family photos, framed tastefully in the walls of the hallway. One of them had the Rick Delta-5 holding a crying baby Morty, grimacing. Aside from a large, noticeable freckle on his right cheek, he looked just like Rick.

“Holy shit,” whispered Morty.

Rick grinned.

The Ricki in the video returned her gaze back to the hall. Her steps were silent, scarily so, and she went past other rooms until she reached Morty’s room. She turned the knob, slowly opened the door, then stepped in.

The room itself had been painted in light blue, and it didn’t have much aside from a baby monitor and a crib. Inside, a baby Morty with a freckle slept peacefully. He didn’t so much as flinch when Ricki produced a small vial and poured a little powder over it. The baby shifted, its face scrunched up, then went back to bed as if nothing, yawning as it settled back into sleep.

Ricki’s gripped the corner of the crib, her entire body shaking. She reached toward the baby, stopped, and drew her hand back as if expecting it to bite her. A few seconds crawled by, and Ricki didn’t move.

The low, shrill noise of a blaster made Ricki spin around and duck. The video blurred as Ricki knelt down, took out her own blaster, pointing up at the intruder.

“Get away from my grandson, a-asshole,” said Rick Delta-5.

Ricki kept her blaster pointed up at him. The Rick squinted his eyes, frowning. “What are you, one of those ass-hats from the Citadel? Th-they set you up to this, huh? Was it Rick C-91? I t-told that bastard I’d pay him back in a week.”

“Put your gun down, and nobody needs to get hurt,” she said, her tone surprisingly calm despite her earlier shaking.

“You’re o-obviously insane. You come into my house, trying to kidnap my grandson, a-and what, think I’m just going to let you leave? Drop it and then maybe, just maybe, I’ll kill you quickly and painlessly.”

Ricki fired her blaster and shot him straight between the eyes. His blaster fired, his mouth agape, as he collapsed.

She winced, grabbing her shoulder, where his shot had hit her. She stared back at the corpse, the hole in his forehead still glowing red from heat, the eyes glazed over and dull.

A light switched on from further down the hallway.

Ricki forced herself up with a grunt. She scooped up the baby, still peaceful in his slumber, and shot a portal under them. They were surrounded by swirls of green for a few moments before she landed in her own dimension, in the garage. She let the blaster fall next to her leg and slid down to the floor. She stared down at the baby and gently caressed his head.

“Welcome to your new home, Morty.”

The video stopped. For a moment, Rick drunk in the stunned silence, and his grandson’s expression. Morty’s mouth was agape, eyes filled with disbelief and uneasiness.

After what felt like forever, Summer finally spoke. “What. The fuck. Was that?”

“The so-called ‘innocent old lady’ Morty just talked about. Turns out _her_ Morty died as a baby, so she went batshit and kidnapped somebody else’s. And as we saw, she doesn’t seem to have much of a problem ruining somebody else’s family in the process. So there you have it,” he said, smirking at Morty. “Ricki is what we Ricks like to call a…a Mortysnatcher. Th-that’s a capital offense back at the Citadel of Ricks, which would explain why she was so thrilled at the fact that I took care of them for her.”

“Oh my god,” said Morty. “L-look, Rick, just forget the crystal, okay? I d-d-don’t want to get near this. Th-this is some disturbing shit.”

“Please, Morty, w-we’ve seen a lot worse. Besides, it’s not like I’ll let her kidnap you, and she can’t fucking kill me, so don’t be a pussy. Now come-come on, I’ve completely justified our mission now. That Morty, he-he deserves to know where he came from. The two of you can talk sidekick to sidekick. H-have a little heart-to-heart while I beat up the person responsible for tearing him away from his original family.”  
“Aw, _jeez_ ,” said Morty, holding onto his forehead. He bit his lip. “Fine, I’ll do it, Rick, b-but not for you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Alright, gather round, kids. Here’s what I need you two to do…”

*

Ricki stared up at the starry sky that stretched overhead, melting from a golden orange to a deep, dark blue. She was parked somewhere over the sea, where the light pollution was nonexistent. Her seat was reclined, she was smoking a cigarette, and everything almost felt peaceful. She’d lower the window to let the salty air in, the taste of ocean rolling on her tongue along with the nicotine.

Only a few days passed since her fight with C-137, yet she found herself feeling as if it had been months. She’d given up on trying to sell the powder. It sat in her safe, the same as it was the day she left it there. Ricki had already made enough mistakes to last a lifetime, and the last thing she needed was another one to add to the pile.

A year and a half ago, Ricki had finally been able to come back home. Before then, she only saw Beth whenever she could get to Earth without attracting unwanted attention. Sometimes she’d see Beth in a couple of months. Sometimes a year would pass. The only exceptions had been Summer’s birth, and then Morty’s, because she’d be damned if she missed those.

When she’d finally felt prepared enough to settle down, Ricki had thought she’d be able to try and repair her relationship with her daughter. At the very least, she wanted to watch over Beth, do one good thing in her life. Diane would’ve wanted that.

Ricki wanted to think that she believed that bringing her grandkids, especially Morty, with her on her outings would open their minds to the universe, to all the possibilities. In reality, the only thing it did was make them more disillusioned with life. With every adventure, they became more jaded. They began to realize what she’d learned a long time ago: no matter where the fuck you went, existence could be harsh, unforgiving and ultimately meaningless. Sure, Morty and Summer have learned more in a year than the educational system would ever teach them in their life, but that was stuff she should’ve shown them in their backyard, not out in some abandoned alien spaceship or war-torn planet.

Besides, Ricki knew the real reason she'd brough the along. The truth was, she had been selfish. She’d wanted somebody to accompany her lonely, pathetic old ass and the kids, especially Morty, had been bright-eyed and bushy-tailed enough to agree to go with her around the galaxy. And now she’d endangered them again, just when she thought she was done putting them through that kind of shit, because Ricki was, in her core, a petty asshole who didn’t know when to stop fucking up.

She shut her eyes, hoping to at least be able to sleep a little when she heard a persistent, urgent beeping from her inter-dimensional phone. Ricki cracked an eye open. She stopped it up and answered without checking the caller ID.

“Yeah?” 

She probably should’ve checked the caller ID.

“Y-yo, asshole, guess who?”

The irritating voice could only belong to one person. She glared down at her cell as if Rick could see her through it. “What the fuck do you want now?” She took a drag from her cigarette.

He fumbled with the phone, the sounds of muffled thuds only adding to Ricki’s bad mood. Eventually, he stopped fumbling with whatever he was doing. “Yeah, don’t play dumb. We both know y-you sent me on a wild goose chase after a fake crystal.”

“So what?” Ricki blew out smoke. “You gonna bitch about it? I’m not in the mood, Sanchez.”

“R-really? You’re using last names? The hell are you, my mother?” There was a pause. She imagined he was sipping from his flask. “Y-you should’ve thought of that before trying to trick me with that fake crystal shit.”

Ricki exhaled, watching the smoke’s lazy ascent. “'Trying’ would imply you didn’t fall for it.”

She could feel Rick simmering with rage from here. She smirked.

“Y-you think you’re so smug? I’m gonna make you wish you hadn’t fucked with me. Meet me at the cavern from our first meeting in an hour.”

Ricki rolled her eyes. “Or else what?”

“Or I blow up the cave with your stupid grandkids inside of it.”

Ricki bolted up in her chair. Her smug attitude was immediately replaced with sheer, raw panic. “You’re bluffing.”

He chuckled. “You wish. Y-you may have put a field around the house, but those dumb little turds had to go to school eventually.”

Ricki slapped her forehead. She hadn’t given the shield around the school as much attention as the ones at the house. Hacking them must’ve been stupid easy. “You—damnit, fine. I’ll give you the powder I have, alright? Then this is over.”

“Uh, you don’t make the demands here, I do. H-hurry up before I use your Morty for target practice. I-I have a few extra guns from my lab I haven’t tested out yet.”

“Hurt a goddamn hair on either on their heads, and I will kill you, turn your organs inside out and force feed you _every one of them_.”

Rick yawned, loudly. “S-sorry, I was bored shitless with your basic bitch threat. You wouldn’t want me getting bored, by the way, I-I tend to experiment on other people’s grandkids when I get bored. K, bye.”

He hung up.

Ricki stared at her phone. It took a moment for her to realize her entire body was shaking.

Stupid, stupid, _stupid_. She’d been such a damn fool. She should’ve given them their own force fields, should’ve…

Her phone rang again, this time with Beth’s caller ID. Ricki answered, biting her lip. “W-what is it, sweetie?”

“Oh, hey, Dad. I need a favor.”

Okay. She seemed calm. She probably didn’t know about the situation yet. There were voices in the background, and the occasional beep of what she assumed to be medical equipment, so Beth must still be at the clinic.

“I’m sorry to ask this, but I have to stay late at work, and so does Jerry. Do you mind picking up the kids and getting them dinner? It’s just for tonight.”

“N-no problem, sweetie,” she said. If Ricki believed in a god, she would’ve thanked him. Instead, she began typing the coordinates into her ship’s navigation screen. “B-be more than happy to. Just…just me and the kids on a totally safe, Earth-based trip. On this planet. To get dinner. A-and nothing else.”

“Yeah, okay, thanks Dad,” she said, probably already getting ready for a surgery. “See you later, bye.”

Ricki was left with the sound of the ocean waves, a bitter taste in her mouth that wasn’t from the cigarette.

It couldn’t have been a more obvious trap, and it could’ve been prevented.

Despite the fiasco in the garage, Ricki hadn’t wanted to kill Rick C-137. Maybe rip out a limb or two, or give him the shits for a week, but not murder him. The sentiment didn’t come out of the goodness of her heart, or any of that crap. In fact, a dark, violent part of herself, the one she only reserved for Galactic Federation goons, pedophiles, rapists, people who called ‘first’ on Youtube comment threads and Jehovah’s witnesses, wanted to watch him suffer as she tore him to shreds, and then feed said remains to a wormhole two dimensions away and watch every molecule in his body dissolve into nothingness.

No, it wasn’t _Rick_ she cared about. She just didn’t want to leave those kids without a grandpa. If C-137 bit the dust, she’d wanted it to be because of his own bullshit, not hers.

But that had been before he’d kidnapped _her_ grandkids.

She pressed a few buttons on the console of her spaceship. It began charging, shaking under the pressure of the new commands. In the blink of an eye, the ship was zooming out of the Earth’s atmosphere, past the moon and various planets, all of it blurring past in a mix-match of colors and shapes, and Ricki held onto the steering wheel, teeth grit, knuckles white.

*

Morty woke up in a damp cell, his face pressed against cold rocky ground. His first reaction was to sigh, rub his eyes, and sit up. He couldn’t see too far ahead. There wasn’t a light source, and he could only make out a shape here and there. He touched his wrists, not feeling any chains, not that it made too much of a difference.

“Aw, jeez, not _again_.”

He tried to remember the last thing that happened before he passed out. He’d gotten out of class, and the bell for the final period had rung. He’d been at his locker, waiting for Jessica to come out of class so that he could catch a glimpse of her before he went home.

So far, so normal. Then, his phone had buzzed, and he’d seen a text from Summer telling him to meet him in the gym. She’d said it was an emergency, and that she’d explain when he got there. And like the idiot he was, he’d rushed over, blinded by worry, only to discover an empty gym when he threw open the doors. Then, he’d heard somebody stand behind him, a cloth shoved in his face, and total darkness.

Yup. He’d been kidnapped.

“Goddamnit, have we just been kidnapped?”

Morty blinked, turning to the other side of the cell. “Summer? I-is that you?”

“Morty? Where the hell are we, I can’t see anything.”

“I-I don’t know,” he said. “B-but I don’t have my cellphone, o-or the emergency taser. What about you?”

Summer shifted somewhere in front of him. “No, fuck. They even took my hairpins.” She paused. “Is Ricki here too?”

The unease in his sister’s voice wasn’t lost on him. “N-no, I don’t think so. It’s just…you and me.”

“Shit. This is probably because of that asshole grandma said not to worry about. I _knew_ she was lying.”

Morty hugged his knees. Ricki may be one of the most bitter, sarcastic person Morty had ever met in his life, but she was also fiercely protective of the two of them. They’d been chloroformed, which meant they must’ve been out for hours.

Morty’s pulse quickened more and more as every second passed, until breathing felt like a near-impossible task. How had he managed to do it all the time without thinking about it? He squeezed his eyes shut, shuddering, waiting for the world to stop spinning.

Ricki never took this long to come after them.

“Morty?” Summer’s voice anchored him back to the present. “Morty, are you okay?”

“I-I think I forgot my medication again.”

Summer swore somewhere next to him.

He gulped for air. “I-I have a really bad feeling about this S-Summer. Ricki—she was acting weird these p-past few days, a-and I didn’t do anything. Th-this hasn’t happened before, Ricki’s always here, and if she’s not—”

Summer’s arms wrapped her brother in a tight hug. “Hey, take it easy, okay, Morty? Grandma Ricki’s fine. She’ll be out here any minute now, and then we’ll be laughing about this later. Try doing that nose breathing stuff from the app, okay?”

Morty struggled to focus on his sister’s voice through the haze that was his thoughts. Everything felt too loud, despite the utter silence of the cave, as if an entire orchestra was assaulting his senses. His ears were ringing.

Morty inhaled through his nose and exhaled through his mouth. He kept repeating the technique until he could at least think a little more clearly. The ringing faded away after a few moments.

Then light flooded the cave, and any calm he’d managed to achieve was replaced by visceral panic. Summer yelped. She raised a hand up to shield their eyes from the bright light that pooled in.

Even after his eyes adjusted, they still stung.

Now that he could see, he took in their situation. They were being held prisoner in a barred cell that was built into the corner of a cave. The lights hung overhead, so bright that they cast long shadows. A few feet in front of them, stood Morty C-137. The kid shifted his feet as soon as Morty and Summer noticed him.

Summer stood up behind Morty, squinting at the Morty. “Are you _trying_ to burn our eyes out?”

He cleared his throat. “Uh s-sorry about that, Rick can be a real asshole when it comes to this stuff and…most things, actually.”

“Wh-what do you want with us, huh?” said Morty. “I-if you’re going to t-try to torture us, i-it won’t solve anything, b-because we don’t know where she is.”

C-137 Morty raised his hands defensively. “Jesus Christ, no! W-what the hell do you think we are?”

“A bunch of dicks who locked us in a dark cell after fucking chloroforming us?” said Summer.

The Morty rubbed his arm, hunching over. “L-look, we’re not here to hurt you, okay? Rick just wants to settle a score.”

“Is that supposed to calm us down?” said Morty, grabbing the bars. He pointed at his look-alike. “Y-you’re just as bad as he is! We know your Rick is fucked up, a-and you’re just doing what he says anyway!”

“Yeah,” said Summer. “Grandma Ricki had the chance to hurt you, and she didn’t. She’s loads better than your shitty Rick!”

The Morty raised his hands as if to calm them down. “I already know my Rick is terrible. I’m only here because I want to help you guys. Y-your grandma is dangerous. Sh-she isn’t who she says she is, and I-I think you have a right to know what she d-did.”

Summer crossed her arms, rolling her eyes. “Wow, what a shock. As if we didn’t already know that she’s, like, a wanted criminal and stuff.”

“I’m not talking about that,” said Morty C-137. “Look, I’m sorry to say this, but…” He took a deep breath, then turned to face Morty. “Y-you’re not her first Morty. Her Morty, Morty D-312-A, h-he died when he was a baby. You’re his replacement she stole from another Rick.”

“What are you talking about?” said Morty. “You’re j-just telling us shit to t-trick us!”

Morty C-137 frowned at him. He averted his gaze from the two. “I really don’t want to show you the proof, okay? I-it’s not pretty.”

“Uh, that’s probably because you don’t have any proof,” said Summer. “Because you’re a liar.”

The Morty dug in his pocket and pulled out a tiny cube. He sighed, biting his lip as he set it down. He pressed the top of it and stepped away as a hologram projection covered the wall behind him.

Morty and Summer, despite themselves, watched the entire thing without a single word. With every moment that went by, Morty began to realize his counterpart wasn’t lying. It would have been so easy not to believe it, yet there was something about the way the Morty reacted, about the nervousness of Ricki for the past few days, that made it all click together.

She hadn’t just been afraid of C-137 because he was dangerous.

Morty felt his legs give out and landed on his ass. He stared, dumbly, at the wall where the projection was even after it stopped, his hand subconsciously rubbing the cheek with his birthmark. He felt like he was about to throw up.

Next to him, Summer banged her fist against the bars of their cell, screaming. “That’s such bullshit! There’s no way Ricki would kidnap somebody else’s kid, you’re just brainwashed to believe whatever your Rick tells you!” She kicked at the bars. “Let us out of here, right now, or I swear to God—”

An explosion shook the ground. Dust and pebbles fell around them. Everybody struggled to keep their balance as the shaking continued for a few more seconds.

“That must be Grandma Ricki!” said Summer with a triumphant smile. “I told you she’d come!”

Morty couldn’t find it in him to share her excitement. Instead, there was numbness, and something else he couldn’t put his finger on. “Yeah…”

A large chunk of rock fell next to Morty, pulling him out of his thoughts. He yelped and leaped to his feet, scrambling away from it.

“Morty!” Summer pointed to the roof.

There were large cracks forming on the roof. Dust spilled from them as they began to widen.

“Shit!” Morty ran to the door of their cell. “Y-you can’t keep us in here, we’ll be crushed!”

Morty C-137 only had to take one look at the roof to spring into action. He ran over, fidgeting with the keys.

“Hurry up!” said Summer, eyes darting from the door to increasingly unstable roof.

He swung the door open. Morty and Summer ran out just as the cell caved in, bars groaning under the falling debris as they were crushed.

Morty saw more cracks form around his feet. “W-we can’t stay here, come on!”

“Ah, jeez,” said C-137. “This way!” He gestured towards the entrance of the cavern.

The three of them ran as fast as their legs could carry them. They passed a few smaller caverns, all empty, until they began seeing a light at the end of their path. They rushed out, jumping away from the mouth of the cave just as it caved in.

“Grandma Ricki!” shrieked Summer, staring back at the pile of boulders that used to be a cave.

Morty C-137 ran towards the debris. “No! M-my sister’s in there!”

Morty grabbed C-137’s arm. “A-are you insane? You don’t know if the ground’s stable!”

C-137 pushed him off. His hands latched onto the heavy rock, his fingers visibly bruising as he pulled at a boulder. “I don’t care! I have to dig her out! Rick has a spare body but Summer doesn’t!”

Morty paused. Did Ricki have an extra body? She must have. There’s no way she wouldn’t.

Right?

“Wait,” said Summer, clasping her hands together. “They still have their portal guns, right? They should be coming up soon.” She began pacing, searching the horizon. “Th-they have to be.”

“They’d be up by now,” said Morty C-137, struggling to push aside a boulder, slamming his weight against it. “D-damn it! Come on!”

Morty swallowed. He didn’t hear a portal open, and he couldn’t see anyone aside from the three of them. “Did your Rick come back in a ship?” He went over and finally managed to tear C-137 away from his task. “M-maybe we can get something th-that’ll help us find them…”

Something green flashed behind him. He was overcome with relief when he heard the familiar warbled pop of somebody stepping out of a portal. “Ricki, you’re—”

He turned around, then froze. Only one person stood in front of him, and it wasn’t Ricki. It wasn’t even Rick C-137, but he knew who it was. The freckle was in the same place as it had been in the video.

“Oh my god,” said Summer. “You’ve _got_ to be kidding me.”

The Rick had a large, pink scar in the middle of his unibrow, and he stared down at Morty in a way that made the younger man want to crawl under a rock. The Rick—his Rick?—stared down at his watch, a bored expression on his face. It beeped and scanned Morty, then C-137 and Summer.

The Rick made an amused sound. “About—urrpp—fucking time I found you.”

“Uh,” Morty began to slowly back away from the stranger. He swallowed. “Grandpa R-Rick?”

“Long time no see, Morty. I-it’s good to see your still a-alive and kicking.” The Rick took out a large blaster and aimed it at Morty.

Morty shot his hands up in the air. “Aw, _jeez_.”

The Rick smirked at his grandson. “We’ve got a _lot_ of c-catching up to do.”

*

Ricki wasn’t surprised to find C-137 standing in the middle of the cavern when she arrived. As opposed to the last time she’d wandered in the cave, there were no crystals to be seen, only some artificial lights placed on the walls. Everything appeared to be empty, but Ricki knew that any traps would be hidden from sight.

He checked his watch as she walked in, tapping his foot. “Y-you almost took the entire hour.” He burped. “Wh-what, is the fact that your grandchildren are in imminent danger n-not enough to make you haul ass?”

“Oh, you know how it is,” she said, stopping only a few feet away from him. “H-had to pick up some things on the way. The grandkids are probably going to be bitching the entire ride home if I don’t have snacks with me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said C-137. “Q-quit stalling and hand over the crystal powder.”

Ricki took out the box and extended it towards Rick.

He smiled at her, flashing his teeth. “Nice try. Open it first. Try anything a-and I’ll blow up the cell your grandkids are in.” He showed her a button that had been sewn inside of his lab coat. “So don’t get any ideas.”

Ricki glared at him but flipped the latch open so that he could see the fine powder, wrapped in plastic. “Go ahead, scan it. I-it’s all that I have.”

He did. A small beep from his own wristwatch reported the results, and he hummed, scrolling through the screen. “’Bout time. Put in on the ground and s-step back, hands where I can see them. And take out your s-shitty magic ring too.”

“What,” said Ricki, tossing the ring away from them, “A-are you going to do the entire fucking hostage bit? You don’t have the decency to at least point a gun at my face?”

“Hey, it’s _my_ hostage situation, asshole. The next time you h-have one, you can handle it however you want. Besides, I’m pointing a metaphorical gun at you by e-endangering your grandkids. Now hands up.”

She complied, shooting daggers at him. If she was going to do this, she’d at least make this as annoying as possible. “Ugh, just get _on_ with it.”

He picked up the crystal dust, throwing the box to the side, and pocketed it.

“There,” she said. “You have what you want. N-now where are my Morty and Summer?”

Rick rubbed his chin, staring up at the ceiling as if deep in thought. “Riiight, that. By my calculations, they should be about to witness the video evidence of you murdering another Rick to kidnap his grandson.”

The blood drained from her face. It felt like time itself had slowed down. Words eluded her as she remembered what she did that night, how it would look like if someone were to have seen it.

The cock-sucking idiot was obviously enjoying it, all triumphant smirking and amusement twinkling in his manic eyes.

Ricki sucked in her breath, realizing that she had stayed quiet for too long. “I don’t—”

Rick rolled his eyes. “Try and deny it alllll you want, but I managed to use my alternate reality visor and tweaked it to see some of your memories. I-I got to hand it to you, though. I thought y-you’d just let your Morty die in an explosion like half everybody else and gotten a new one from the Citadel.”

“I did what I had to.”

Rick narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, to nab a free Morty.”

“ _You don’t know what you’re talking about_.”

Rick whistled. “Uh, well I do know that you’re probably losing it, s-so I may have done your grandkids a favor by getting them the fuck away from you.”

Ricki immediately drew her blaster.

Rick placed his finger over the button, stepping back. “Fuck off!” he said. “One more move and you’re going to need to steal some more grandkids!”

“Then do it,” she said.

Rick hesitated. His finger twitched over the button, but he didn’t press it. “I’m giving you one chance—”

“Your Morty is in the same place as mine is,” she said, quickly, as she began forming a plan. She took a step closer. “And judging by your body language, he doesn’t have a portal gun. Your Summer is probably somewhere nearby as well, which means you aren’t going to press that button.”

“Oh yeah?” said Rick. “I know they’re leaving that chamber as we speak—”

“No you don’t. You want to know How I can tell? It is exactly what I would do if I were you. I might not be you, but I used to be like you, motherfucker. Any type of vibration in these caves will cause it to collapse, k-killing us all. And despite you being the most disgusting, pathetic, amoral psychopath in the multiverse, you care about your Morty, because you saved him from the Cronenberg dimension you created.”

She aimed at his forehead. “So what’s it gonna be? You gonna quit fucking around, or are you gonna kill us?”

The smugness that had radiated from Rick the entire time had been stomped out. A small drop of sweat slid down his forehead. His teeth were grit, and he made a noise of frustration. “Well, guess that plan’s a bust. Summer! Plan B!”

“What?”

A shot rang through the air. It caught in her forcefield, but instead of dissolving, it spread across it. It began to dissolve, then burst open, leaving nothing left.

“Fuck!” she said.

Ricki leaped out of the way of a blaster shot from Rick. She took cover behind a rock formation. She noticed what she assumed was Rick’s Summer lowering the ray gun she’d used on her forcefield. They made eye contact, and the girl froze.

For an awful, terrible, moment, Ricki thought about opening fire on such a clear target. Even if it didn’t hit the girl, Rick wouldn’t expect it and it’d throw him off. But she couldn’t bring herself to even raise her weapon at the girl.

The Summer ran off, probably to get her Morty.

Ricki forced herself to focus on the situation at hand. She pressed her back against her cover. “That all you got, Sanchez?”

A small, metallic orb rolled at her feet. She immediately leaped away just as it blew up, the explosion pushing her away from cover. The nanotech in her coat managed to absorb most of the blast. She rolled into a crouching position, and dug something out of her coat just as Rick aimed again. He fired, and she raised a glove that bounced the shot back at Rick.

The old man cursed as it grazed his side. “Jesus fucking—how many shields do you have? Wh-what, are you auditioning to join the Vindicators with your crappy-ass gimmick?”

“Say what you want, I’ve kept this body intact for the past 30 years thanks to this tech, and it’ll make it all the easier to kill you if you can’t shoot me!”

“Hah! You’re really itching to add another Rick to your kill list, aren’t you? Protecting your grandkids my ass, y-you’re probably just rubbing your hands together thinking about adding my Morty to your collection!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” She began firing.

Rick was surprisingly agile. He weaved around, managing to avoid all her beams. With the press of his watch, clones of himself filled the cavern.

Ricki began shooting them one by one. “You think I’m going to fall for this?” she shouted. “You can’t hide forever.”

She felt something smack her shoulder with a sickening crunch. She cried out, crumpling to the ground. She rushed to raise her shield just in time for a large boulder to bounce against it. Rick rapidly pressed a combination on his watch, using a levitation beam to gather more and more of them around him.

“For a Rick, you still fall for the oldest Rick tricks in the book,” he said, slamming his hand over his wristwatch and launching all his projectiles at once.

Ricki held up the gloved shield and steadied her wrist with her free hand, bracing herself. Ricki grit her teeth, feeling every hit rattle her bones as her footing began to give. _Come on, almost there…_

Her forcefield turned from blue to red, and she let a shockwave ripple towards Rick, destroying the rest of the boulders and sending him flying.

The cave rumbled, and some debris fell from the roof. A colony of carnivorous bats screeched their disapproval as they flew away, towards the mouth of the cave.

She ran towards him, screaming, pulling out a long, blue plasma blade.

Rick grabbed her wrist just as she made to stab him, and punched her with his free hand. Despite the pain, she stayed put. Her glove was pulled off while she smacked his blaster out of his hand.

Rick got another punch in just as she kicked him in the balls. They both staggered back, although Rick suffered the worst of it, bent over, hands over his privates.

“Ugh, you just had to go for the low blow,” he said.

Ricki didn’t answer, instead choosing to grab a nearby rock and strike him in the face. It hit him in the eye, knocking him down, his enraged howling echoing throughout the chasm. 

She pinned him in place and brought the rock down again and again, listening to visceral crunching with every strike. There was a roaring in her ears and she felt light-headed, as if any semblance of rational thought had just left her brain, listening to nothing but her searing, red-hot anger. That might have been why she didn’t hear the charge of his blaster until she felt a searing burn in the middle of her belly.

Ricki screamed, instinctively clutching her stomach. Rick pushed her off, slamming her back-first onto the cavern floor, her skull smacking onto the hard rock. She was still conscious, but in far too much pain, and unable move her limbs or see anything aside from the blurry silhouette of C-137 aiming his weapon at her.

“Any last words before I paint the ground with your brains?” he said between grit teeth.

Ricki coughed blood, clutching her belly only to feel the slick blood cover her fingers. She thought about Beth, who was back at the clinic, probably blissfully unaware of the fact she would lose the only parent she had left, how she’d find a way to blame herself. Then her thoughts turned to Summer and Morty finding her crumpled on the floor of the cave with her head reduced to a bloody pulp, or being crushed under hundreds of pounds of rock, their last moments of life spent in hopelessness and terror. They’d be gone forever, and nobody would be able to even know where to find their bodies.

“Please, just, take th-them home. They didn’t…they had nothing to do with this.” Ricki said, even as blood filled her mouth with every other word. She forced herself to blink back the tears forming in her eyes. “They d-don’t deserve this.”

Rick didn’t say anything. She waited for the sound of his blaster, for anything, but it didn’t come.

“For _fuck’s_ sake…”

She heard him grumble something else under his breath, catching the words “asshole” and “psycho” as he walked up to her.

Her body jolted as something pricked her arm. She groaned as her light-headedness began to fade away. The pain in her stomach had begun to diminish.

Ricki gasped. She forced herself to sit up, backing away from Rick.

“Get your stupid grandkids and get out before I regret this,” he said. 

“Wh-what?” she said, once she realized he wasn’t trying to do anything. “After all this crap, you’re just letting me go?”

“D-do you want me to kill you?” he snapped. “Because I-I can change my mind if y-you’re gonna be annoying about this.”

“No need for that,” came a voice from behind. “Although I appreciate you doing half the job for me.”

The hairs on Ricki’s neck stood up. She opened her mouth to speak when something hard and metallic was placed on the back of her head. Panic began to take over as she took in Rick’s shocked expression, which meant that this wasn’t in his plan. Which must mean—

“Holy shit,” said Rick. “You’re alive?”

“ _You_ ,” said Ricki. “Son of a—”

A click was the last thing she heard the millisecond before he blew her head off.

*

“Holyfuckingshit!” said Rick, watching Ricki’s twitching body fall to the ground, what was left of her head scattered around her body and all over him. “Seriously? I let her live and you kill her two seconds afterwards?”

The Rick, who he immediately recognized as the one from the video, raised his eyebrow at him. A thick, pink scar cut in between his unibrow, and he stared at Rick with the same cold, empty eyes he’d faced when that scarred Rick freak with an eyepatch tried to take his memories a few months ago.

“I called dibs,” he said, putting his blaster away. “Although, I have to thank you for doing the heavy work for me.” He stomped on her neck stump, blood splattering all over his white coat and face. “If it weren’t for you, I would’ve had to deal with all that crap, so you have my thanks.”

Rick winced. “Bro, chill the fuck out, s-she’s already _dead_.”

“She should be thankful I made it quick. Do you have any idea how painful it is to wait for nanobots to repair a bullet wound when you’re still conscious? Not in my top ten things to remember.”

Rick laughed nervously, an uneasy feeling starting to take hold. “N-nanomachines, eh? A little Hideo Kojima, but you do you, buddy.”

Rick Delta-5 ignored his joke. “Where’s my Morty?”

The Rick didn’t say it in the tone one would expect from a man who’d been murdered trying to protect his grandson. It was the same tone Rick would hear from pampered stay-at-home moms when they ordered their coffee: uninterested, condescending and a little too menacing for Rick’s liking.

Maybe, just _maybe_ , he’d fucked up.

“I-I’m going to take a shot in the dark and guess that you don’t want your Morty back so that the two of you can go grab ice cream and play catch.”

The Rick regarded him as if he’d just taken his clothes off and started dancing naked in front of him. “What the fuck are you, a Jerry? He’s my first test subject, duh.”

“ _Test subject_?”

“Yeah, I happen to have been in the middle of a splicing experiment that involves turning Mortys into human-rat hybrids, but I still haven’t perfected the formula enough to keep them alive past a few years. My Morty was patient zero, and he’s managed to survive the initial stages of splicing. You know how it is.”

“Yeah,” said Rick, reaching for the inside of his coat. “I h-hear you man.”

“What are you doing?” said Delta-5, drawing his blaster.

“Whoa, calm down, I’m just getting my flask…” Rick pressed the button on his coat. “And activating the bomb that will make this cave crush us if you don’t haul ass.”

Explosions broke off in the distance. The other Rick leaped away from a piece of debris that fell right where he’d been standing. Rick reached for his portal gun, shot a portal, and went through. He quickly reached the other end of it to find Summer at the rendezvous point, her eyes wide with fear as the cave begun to crumble around her.

“Grandpa Rick what the hell is going on?”

Rick opened a portal behind her. “No time, just get in, I-I gotta get Morty.”

“He’s not with you?”

“Just get in, Summer!” Rick pushed her inside the portal. He began punching in the new coordinates when he felt a hand grab the back of his lab coat and pull him into a different portal.

He coughed, stumbling onto the lemongrass fields on the planet, with the other Rick looming over him. His coat had been thrown a few feet away. As Rick made a grab for it, the man kicked the portal gun out of his hand and picked him up by the collar of his turtleneck.

“Where is my Morty?” said Delta-5, lifting up Rick so that his feet were dangling in the air.

“S-somebody’s been w-working out,” croaked Rick. “Wh-what’s the secret, steroids, or…?”

“Shut up,” he said. “Quit your stalling, _Rick_. I’m only asking one more time. You helped me out, but that doesn’t mean I won’t blow your head off and sell off your organs in the black market.”

_“No! M-my sister’s in there!”_

_“Dude, a-are you insane? Stay away, you don’t know if the ground’s stable!”_

The Rick glanced over his shoulder. Rick followed his gaze. He cursed under his breath. The kids were at the mouth of the cave, screaming. They were out in the open, for fuck’s sakes.

_Run you little shits._

The other Rick smirked back at Rick. “That was easy.”

He dropped Rick. The old man didn’t even have time to blink when the other man punched him in the gut, then kicked his jaw. Rick collapsed on his back, gasping for air.

The dramatic irony was not lost on him.

He began to lose consciousness. Overhead, he heard another portal open up.

“Thanks for the new Morty, by the way. I may even be able to use the Summer, who knows?”

Rick managed to flip him off before he lost consciousness.

*

Want to ask about my writing? Check out my [Tumblr](https://introvert-no-chameleon.tumblr.com/).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't planning on using a cliffhanger, but hey. They're a staple of fiction for a reason. The next update is coming in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!


	3. Ricking Around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I-I have very selfish, self-serving reasons for saving m-my Morty.”
> 
> “Not arguing with that.”
> 
> “Good,” he said, drinking from his flask, smacking his lips loudly. “H-he should be happy t-to be useful to me. What is his life w-without me, anyway? Going to school, g-getting some girl knocked up at 17, convincing said girl not to go through with an abortion, e-ending up in a shitty marriage…”
> 
> “You’re literally describing Jerry.”
> 
> “B-because he’s the weak link! M-Morty needs to learn to be better…n-not because I g-give a shit about him, or his life, or his f-future or any of that, but because h-he’s more useful if he’s smart.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a LOT of body horror and graphic violence in this one. Worst of all, people talking about their feelings. The horror! 
> 
> You've been warned, broh!

There are a lot of experiences that can be considered disorienting. Walking out of a building into a harsh sunny day, waking up in the morning and listening to the first few seconds of a Skrillex song could all be considered perfect examples of said experiences. However, none came close to the feeling of snapping your eyes open and going through a massive sensory overload, like every part of the body felt _wrong_ and your brain didn’t know how to handle it.

Hands twitched, a mouth gasped for breath, got filled with liquid, screamed. With a roar, the liquid began draining away.

Ricki gasped for air, falling to her knees at the bottom of the cloning chamber. The glass lowered around her, disappearing into the ground. Her entire body, which she quickly realized was naked, shivered, goosebumps peppering her flesh.

She touched her face. Then she slapped her cheeks, feeling the sharp sting of pain.

“S-shit. I’m. Alive.”

It all came back to her then, the entire day and the last moments of her past body’s life. Ricki forced herself to stand up. She took two steps than fell again. With a grunt, she pushed herself up again. Taking slow, steady steps, she made it to the desk. Once there, she fell onto the chair, catching her breath. Her eyes wandered to her reflection in the black monitor and caused her to almost stumbled out of her chair.

“Shit.Shitshit _shit_.”

It was at that moment that Ricki remembered. She’d scraped her old clones and begun the process of making newer ones to match her transformation, which meant her twin body wasn’t done yet.

“Oh, no.” She poked at her cheeks, that had noticeably fewer wrinkles. She lifted an eyelid, then another. Ricki sat back with a groan.

No wonder she was so disoriented. Jumping into a younger body was a _bitch_ , and also a lot more difficult to get a hang of. Not to mention, her body wasn’t used to feeling less…achy. It wasn’t the biggest difference, but it was enough to throw her off. At least wasn’t in the 25-year-old body (she shuddered at the thought), so that was something in her favor.

“Computer,” she said, causing the monitor to come to life. “Activate Protocol Reverse Phoenix.”

“Initiating,” said the feminine computer voice.

A new pair of clothes dropped on Ricki’s lap. Robot arms lifted her up, helping her slip on her pants, then her shirt, and finally her lab coat. It then placed a case in front of her which she immediately opened. Inside lay a row of vials with clear green liquid and a syringe. Ricki quickly placed the first vial in the device and injected it into her neck.

She sucked in air through her teeth as the liquid began doing its work. She could practically feel her veins burning, but she also began to feel more centered. After a few moments, she managed to stand up on her legs without any trouble.

“Okay. Half an hour for each one.” She set her alarm on her watch. “Should be more than enough to do what I need to do.”

She grabbed a portal gun from her lab coat, thanking her past self for at least remembering to make a spare. As she began collecting some weapons to stuff in her lab coat, she noticed her memory gun. Even she had to admit that it looked ridiculous, more like a small satellite dish than a gun, but it did what it was made to do. A zap from the ray would eliminate the chosen target’s memories and store them in a vial placed in the gun. She stuffed it in her pocket along with everything else, made a portal and jumped in.

Ricki landed roughly on the planet, the stench of rotting oranges once again filling her nostrils. She reached the cave, or what was left, in a matter of minutes. Morty and Summer were no-where to be found.

She knew he’d take them, but a part of her had hoped that maybe they’d gotten away. As she began typing something in her watch when she heard somebody groaning a little bit farther in the lemongrass field. Ricki drew her blaster and crept over. She stopped just as she came across C-137, splayed on the ground like a crusty, bruised-up starfish

He’d looked even worse than he had after their fight, covered in blood and the human remains from her old body. The stench of copper quickly overpowered the rotten orange smell. Bits of what she assumed was her brain clung to his hair.

Ricki contemplated using the blaster and ending him right then and there. It would be satisfying, the closest thing to a high she would experience since she got off the psychedelics, and he deserved it. She knew he’d kill her and her grandkids in the blink of an eye if he felt they so much as inconvenienced him.

Sure, he hadn’t killed her when he had the chance, but he’d also been the reason she’d gotten killed in the first place, and Ricki sure as hell didn’t owe him shit. Honor didn’t get anybody anywhere but an early grave. And anyway, she’d do it quick. Just one shot between the eyes, like she’d done with Delta-5. Painless and effective.

She stood over his motionless body, his shut eyes, his pained expression. Somehow, she’d forgotten, admist the heat of the moment, how old and frail he was. The wrinkles on his face far too like her own, the ashy skin that she’d only recently managed to cure after getting off the drugs. Unconscious, he couldn’t hide the reality of his mortality behind all his bravado.

Goddamnit, she really was getting soft.

Ricki groaned, putting her weapon away. After a moment of rummaging through the many, many pockets in her lab coat and three pocket pocket-dimensions she went over to him and broke a capsule over his head, the powder filling his nostrils.

C-137 gasped. He opened one eye, then another. His hand flew to his forehead, squinting against the startlingly harsh rays of sunlight that, if her past experiences were anything to go by, were probably pounding into Rick’s senses with the gentleness of a sledgehammer.

“Get up,” she said.

Rick stared up at her, narrowing his eyes.

She nudged him none-too-gently, making no effort to hide her annoyance. “Y-you can take a nap later, it’s about time you make yourself useful.”

Rick eventually did. He winced as he stood up, various joints popping in protest. “The hell are you?”

“Who the fuck do you think?”

His eyes widened. “D-312-A? Huh. Didn’t know if you had a spare body or not. So you de-aged yourself a decade with your regeneration? Maybe I should try it n-next time I get killed.”

“It wasn’t on purpose, and I-I don’t recommend it, I’m trying to catch up with 10 years of muscle memory.” Ricki crossed her arms. “Let me guess, he took your Morty too.”

“Yeah, yeah, r-rub salt in my wounds w-why don’t you?” He unscrewed the top of his flask and took a swig. He burped, the smell of whiskey reaching her.

God, she missed being drunk. Or, more accurately, she missed the nice, numbing bliss that came with being incredibly drunk, but she digressed. 

Ricki pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. She inhaled as much smoke as she could and blew it out, but her lungs weren’t having it. She coughed until her throat burned. “Oh, for _fuck’s_ sakes, damn new pair of lungs.” She flicked her cigarette away and stomped it on the grass. “This day just gets worse and worse.”

“Yeah, y-your telling me.” He wiped the blood from his face. “S-so what, we’re cool now, since I know that you’re actually a-at least mostly justified in your murder and kidnapping?”

Ricki glared at him. “You got us into this mess, you’re getting us out.”

“Uh, I didn’t shoot a Rick a-and leave before confirming he wouldn’t phoenix his way back to the land of the living. A-as a former Rick, you know that most of us have one.”

She grit her teeth. “I would’ve finished the job had it not been for you messing with my shield in the first place.”

“H-hey, you started a fight you can’t win, th-that’s on you.”

“Because y-you wanted a chunk of a crystal that isn’t even worth it, you fucking _psychopath_.” She waved her hands in the air for emphasis. “T-this is a waste of my time, I don’t know why I even…” She rubbed her temples. “I should’ve just killed you.”

“That’s on you.” He winced, rubbing his back. “Ow. Oh, I’m feeling _that_ in the morning.”

“I hope you do,” she said. She projected a screen and began zeroing in on the signal for the microchip she implanted on Morty. “Unregistered asteroid. How original.” She began typing in coordinates in her portal gun.

“That’s not going to work.”

She glared at him. “Why not?”

“Because he probably has anti-portal countermeasures put in his facility.”

“You think that hasn’t occurred to me? I upgraded my gun ages ago for that sort of thing.”

“Maybe, but i-it’s also what he expects you to do. Y-you know what he isn’t expecting? For us to fly to his planet.”

“Us?”

“I never said I disagreed with having us both work together, I-I just wanted to make it as annoying as possible.”

Ricki flipped him off.

Rick ignored the gesture. “Time’s a-wastin’, you can save your bitching for Dr. Wong.”

His car hovered overhead, then landed abruptly next to Rick. Ricki got in the passenger’s seat and put her feet up as Rick opened the trunk and got changed. A few moments passed where he rummaged around, presumably getting something for his headache/hangover. He got in looking less like he just waltzed out of a slaughterhouse, and they were flying off the planet in seconds. He pushed a lever and the ship trembled as they began gaining speed until everything around them was a blur.

“We’ll be there in about a minute,” he said.

“I know how hyperdrive works.”

“Y-you want to listen to any—”

“No.”

“Jeez, tough crowd. Y-you can at least make conversation.”

“ _Fine._ Do you have a plan?”

“Same plan as always. Get in, kill the bastard, get our kids home before Beth finds out and look fucking badass while doing it.”

Ricki pulled out her blaster, turning it over. “So you don’t either.”

“I find I-I work better winging it. Planning shit like this out is for people who think the universe is going to bend over backwards t-to their every whim.”

They arrived at the asteroid, passing by two satellites as the car rode by. Instantly, a small army of small spaceships began following the car, shooting beams at them.

Ricki clicked on her seatbelt as Rick began maneuvering the car, barely batting an eye. “W-where’s the weapon control panel?”

A giant laser canon folded out of a compartment outside the car. It automatically began shooting down the drones, its aim precise and efficient.

Rick burped, one hand on the steering wheel. “O-obviously, they’re automatic. D-don’t tell me you still manually push buttons like some Star Trek captain.”

Ricki opened her mouth to give her own scathing, sarcastic remark when a beam hit the ship, causing both of them to lurch forward in their seats. Ricki’s seatbelt tightened around her torso, squeezing her against her chair.

Rick, on the other hand, smashed his head into the steering wheel, his skull bouncing back like a basketball on concrete. His body went limp, and immediately the ship took a nosedive towards the asteroid.

The ship began gaining speed with it descent, alarms blaring inside the ship and warning her of the obvious. “God fucking damnit, Sanchez!” She shoved Rick out of the way and grabbed the steering wheel. She pulled it up, just moments before they fell in. She began steering them out of the way of space debris and large, metal structures protruding from the asteroid’s surface.

Rick was groaning some incomprehensible shit behind her.

“Wake up and do something before we crash, jackass!” Her knuckles hurt from how tense her grip on the steering wheel was. With a loud grunt, she swerved away from a drone that almost crashed into them.

In the corner of her eyes, she saw Rick shake his head. “Shit. Shit! W-what are you doing? A-activate your shield, d-did you forget your brain when we started dropping?”

Ricki set her jaw. She adjusted the measurements on her watch, and pressed a button. A large, blue sphere surrounded the ship.

“Put on your fucking seatbelt!” she screamed, scrambling back to her seat and shutting her eyes.

She wasn’t aware of he did or not, because they bounced off a drone, smacked against a large metallic pillar, and crashed onto the ground. Through it all, Ricki’s shield remained intact, although the same couldn’t be said about everything inside the space car. Ricki’s teeth clanged together, her head snapped back, giving her a hell of a migraine from the whiplash, and she felt her stomach lurch as if it leaped straight out of her body through her mouth. Cushions from the backseat had, at one point, fallen around them.

The two passengers took a few moments to catch their breaths. Ricki’s heart was pounding so hard it hurt her chest. In the past, she would’ve shrugged off stuff like this, but having recently been on the literal brink of death must’ve been getting to her. She wiped the sweat off her forehead with a shaking hand.

Next to her, Rick was rubbing his face, groaning. “Oh, I-I think I’m going to throw up.” He managed to, by some miracle, hold it in long enough to slide down the window, shove his head out and puke.

Ricki pinched her nose, silently begging her own body not to take his example. “You are a fucking idiot,” she said, once she could form words again.

“Seatbelts only grant the illusion of safety and security.”

Ricki shot him the most withering look she could muster. “W-we’re only alive because of that illusion of security. Get your shit together, Sanchez, I-I thought you were ‘above’ other Ricks.”

Rick folded his arms over his chest. “M-my shit is always together. M-maybe I’m just hoping you pull your own weight, and that was a test.”

“The fuck do I look like, Jerry? Just get inside the damn cargo bay.” Ricki slumped against the back of her seat, holding her hand to her still-beating heart. “I am getting too old for this shit.”

Rick scoffed a hint of amusement in the gesture. “That’s something we can agree on. R-remind me why the hell w-we do this shit?”

“Because you tried to kill me, and that opportunist took advantage of your jackass by killing me and taking our grandkids?”

“Not just this,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I-I mean r-rescue our Mortys. In general. T-they’re always more trouble t-that they’re worth, a-always getting captured and shit. I-I could be back at the lab, having a nice cold beer and just m-making a clone or something. M-maybe program it not to be so fucking annoying.”

Ricki scoffed. “Y-you could’ve fucked off instead of coming with me a-and almost getting us killed, so you tell me.”

“Trying to get me t-to spill the beans on my so-called attachment, a-are you?”

“Please,” she said. “Y-you’re only fooling yourself with your self-denial.”

He waved her off. “I-I have very selfish, self-serving reasons for saving m-my Morty.”

“Not arguing with _that_.”

“Good,” he said, drinking from his flask, smacking his lips loudly. “H-he should be happy t-to be useful to me. What is his life w-without me, anyway? Going to school, g-getting some girl knocked up at 17, convincing said girl not to go through with an abortion, e-ending up in a shitty marriage…”

Ricki raised the side of her eyebrow. “You’re literally describing Jerry.”

“B-because he’s the weak link!” Rick waved his hand around, whiskey coming out of the flask and spilling onto her lab coat. “M-Morty needs to learn to be better…n-not because I g-give a shit about him, or his life, or his f-future or any of that, but because h-he’s more useful if he’s smart.”

She shoved his arm away. “We both know you’re just dragging him along because you’re too afraid to be alone.” Ricki frowned. “I know I am. E-especially after what happened with Diane.”

“You don’t even know what happened to my universe’s Diane,” he said. His voice had hardened, and his mouth was pressed into a tight line.

“Again, I _read_ your file.”

“We ended up in a shitty marriage, got divorced. _End of story_.”

Ricki sighed. “Does your…this Beth even know?”

Rick began driving the car lower to the ground. They passed several turrets, which shot at Ricki’s shield only for the bullets to ricochet and destroy them.

“How about you stay the hell out of my business, a-and I don’t bring up the fact that you killed your Morty.”

Ricki rubbed her temples. She suppressed the urge to lash out. After all, this was just his way of baiting her. “I didn’t kill him.”

“Y-yeah, sure. What, d-did he swallow a screw? O-or did his idiot father drop him?” Rick cocked his head to the side. “A-actually, that last one is a possibility.”

“I don’t have to explain anything to you.”

“B-because you got him killed.”

“Wow,” she said, exasperated. “For a small moment, I _almost_ forgot how much I hate you.”

“Yeah, big shock, I hate myself too.” He shrugged. “Just like you hate yourself. You’re not the only one who’s done some reading. W-working for the resistance? Really? I-I know some Ricks had a hero phase, but wow, you actually dedicated to it.”

Ricki didn’t dignify that with an answer. She did a check on her weapons, going through pocket by pocket, making sure everything was accounted for. She allowed herself to settle back in her seat and take a moment to compose herself. “Why are you obsessed with proving I’m a bad person?”

“You think you aren’t?”

She placed a hand on her chest. “Oh, fuck no. I-I’m a piece of shit who left my family because I bit off more than I could chew and thought I could take on the Intergalactic Federation. B-but you already know that.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “So, why the ever-loving fuck do you _care_?”

“Because you’re delusional, and if there’s anything I hate more than another version of me, i-it’s a hypocrite. I’m doing you a favor by making you admit that we c-can’t change.”

He’d leaned in towards her and his spit had spattered on her face. Ricki pointed her blaster at him. “Get out of my personal space, Sanchez.”

Rick blinked as if he hadn’t noticed he’d done that. He hastily straightened in his seat, still giving her the stink eye. “M-my point is. It doesn’t matter what we try to do. We all end up the same. J-just look at Simple Rick. H-he thought he could get away with just living a decent life, a-and being a good father and all that bullshit, and the Citadel milked his stupid brain for a bunch of admittedly delicious wafers.”

“You eat Simple Ricks?” she said. “W-what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Don’t act like you haven’t.”

“No,” she said, gritting her teeth. “I draw a line. A-and you know why that’s hard for you to believe? Because both you and the Citadel Ricks all think the same. You’re all self-destructive pieces of shit who think that if you can’t be happy, then neither can anybody else, especially not somebody who reminds you of you.”

For a moment, Ricki thought they’d go right back to trying to kill each other, with the amount of tension there was in the air. She at least had her weapons, but she had the disadvantage of being in his car. If he was anything like her, he had at least a dozen ways to incapacitate her in seconds.

But Rick didn’t attack her. Instead, he asked her something she hadn’t expected.

“W-why bother? Your original Morty is dead, your old cause meant nothing, a-and you’ve spent all these years apart from your family. So what’s the point of trying to change now?”

“What do I look like, Socrates Rick?”

“I-indulge me.”

She could of course, tell him to suck a dick and ignore him. She would have, actually, if it weren’t for the haunted, almost pitying expression he held. It wasn’t that he cared about her, she realized. It was that he saw himself, a possibility, a hope.

She remembered what it felt to live without it. She still did more days than not, but there was an improvement. At least now, there was _something_.

“I can’t believe you got me killed, and now you’re asking me this shit,” she muttered. “You really are insane, even by Rick standards.”

“You g-gonna answer, or not?”

“If it’ll shut you up? F-fine. Here’s my hot take. Whether or not we choose to do a good or bad thing, the universe chugs along, right? Th-then no meaning means that, by definition, we assign meaning.”

Rick raised the side of is unibrow, but he didn’t interrupt.

“Diane, she meant something to me, a-and now she’s gone. I’ll never be able to make it up to her, but…Beth and the kids?” She shrugged. “I guess th-they’re the only things left caring about in the universe, and the only versions of them I have. They’re not the same as the other versions, j-just like you and I aren’t the same. It’s the reason that even when you jump, you go to similar versions of the same family, e-even if Jerry is there, because deep down inside y-you know that you give a shit and y-you just can’t admit it to yourself, because then you’d have to admit that there was something you can’t control, a-and god forbid you admit _that_.”

Rick paused, taking in her words. He kept his eyes ahead, looking through the windshield. “Bet you feel real clever with that remark.”

She massaged her temples, feeling that all-too-familiar throbbing return with a vengeance. “You asked, dipshit.”

The door to the cargo bay opened. He parked the car inside, settling on a spot near a grated staircase. “Whatever. L-let’s just get this over with so we never have to see each other again.”

“That’s probably the only sensible thing you’ve said all day.”

*

Morty hadn’t known what to expect when his grandfather had “picked him up”. He hadn’t even done anything else to acknowledge Morty. All he did after forcing them all to walk through the portal was take him, C-137 and Summer and trap them between a laser wall in some lab.

Unlike Ricki’s, this one had white walls, was incredibly bright and practically empty. It smelled like a hospital, of recently used disinfectants and bleach. In fact, if it weren’t for the faint stench of copper, the fact that it was more spacious than any hospital room he’d ever seen or the rows of metal chairs with restraints in a single line, Morty would’ve thought he was in a hospital.

Next to him, Summer was livid. She was spewing out so many swearwords that it made Morty, who had learned his fair shar from Ricki, cringe. C-137 seemed to have a similar sentiment, although his was somewhat dulled by his attitude. Shoulders slouched and gaze far away, he barely bothered to react to the events around him since the three of them had gotten there.

If Delta-5 was bothered by Summer’s yelling he didn’t show it. He’d stepped out a while back, leaving them all alone in the second prison Morty had the pleasure of being in that day. He took the time to process what he just learned about Ricki.

Why, exactly, had Ricki decided that killing another Rick for a Morty like him would be worth it? Didn’t the Citadel give Ricks a “Rickless” Morty if their Mortys died? Was it because Morty was special? Was he maybe, some sort of weird alien hybrid with powers?

No. He would’ve noticed by now.

Wouldn’t he?

Morty bit his lip, any answers he came up with either fueling his anxiety or just frustrating him more.

“Hey.”

Morty blinked to the present, realizing he’d spaced out.

Rick Delat-5 stood in front of him, staring down at Morty was an insect he was thinking of pinning to a board. “So, how have you been, Morty?”

“What?”

Rick narrowed his eyes. “W-what, are you deaf? Did that idiot Rick get your eardrums fucked up or something?”

“Her name is Ricki,” said Morty. Even with his mixed feelings, he felt the need to correct him.

“L-like it matters.” He opened a hole in the wall and tried to grab Morty’s arm.

Morty backed away from him, shivering. “B-back off!”

Rick glared at him. “I already have to do an examination to see how much has changed since you were a baby. If y-you keep messing around, you’ll just make this more difficult f-for yourself.”

“Get the fuck away from him, you creep!” Summer stood in front of Morty, shielding him from Delta-5. “What kind of a sick freak are you?”

“Ugh,” said Delta-5. “I forgot how fussy Summers can be.” He took out a remote and pressed a button. Another wall appeared, separating Summer and Morty C-137 from Morty.

“S-Summer!”

“I-it’s okay, Morty,” she said. “J-just breathe, okay? W-we’ll be fine.”

“Keep lying to your brother, i-it’ll make what I’m about to do a whole lot easier.”

“A-a-are you…” Morty gulped. “A-are you some sort of pervert?”

Delta-5 had the audacity to look offended. “Wh-what, just because I’m a kidnapper, y-you assume I’m a pedophile?”

“You’re not?” said Summer. “Then what the hell is your deal?”

“Glad you asked. A-allow me to demonstrate.”

He took out a whistle from under his shirt and blew it. Claws clicked on the metallic floor. Something emerged from the hallway behind Delta-5, its figure hunched over and hideous, not shaped like any animal Morty recognized. When it stepped into the lighted room, Morty recoiled.

It was him. Or was. The only thing that was Morty-like about this creature was the face, which was stretched out over a rat-like snout like leather. Most of its body was some mix between a rat and a dog, with long hind legs, human hands with long claws and a fat, rat body and tail. Its fangs were frighteningly sharp, and its dull eyes were darting around the room, seething with a nervous energy that was contagious. Every few seconds, its body twitched. 

All three of the Smiths backed away until they came up against the wall of their prison. They exchanged looks. C-137’s and Summer’s faces were as pale as could be, and Morty imagined that he looked the same. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to run as far away from it as possible.

“Yeah, this one is my last attempt,” said Rick, frowning at it, his tone light and casual as if he was making small talk. “Made some progress, b-but not enough. This one is about to expire. It has a day or two max of life left before it croaks and… _stop fussing_!”

He kicked the creature, who had been rubbing four of its arms nervously. It shrieked, huddling back to a corner of the room, trembling.

Rick cleared his throat. “They’re obedient, _for the most part_.” He glared back at the monster before turning back to Morty. “Also incredibly useful. Rats can chew through almost anything with the right size and teeth enhancements. Add some human DNA, and viola! They have just enough intelligence to follow advanced commands.”

“W-why are you doing this?” said C-137. “What—what is wrong with you? Th-th-those were people! Wh-where did you even get so many—”

Delta-5 began putting on some surgical gloves. “Mortys? Let’s just say the Citadel has been looking around for some new bioweapons. Ricks like me have finally been getting recognized for our genius since the new president took over.” He drank from his flask. “I almost have enough to make an indestructible army. I-I’ve been able to overrun an entire Intergalactic Federation military base with just five of these.”

“Y-you won’t get away with this,” said C-137. “Our grandparents a-are coming, and when they do…”

Delta-5 took out a syringe, back turned to them. He began placing tools on a metal tray next to the chairs. “I’m not an idiot who’s afraid of one Rick, and I killed that other bitch.”

Morty’s knees turned into noodles. He slid down against the wall. The cold metal stung his back. “N-no.”

Summer gasped, putting her hands to her mouth. “Ricki can’t be…”

Delta-5 laughed. It was a harsh, ugly sound, gravely and cruel. “I-it was a walk in the park, really. All I had to do was hide while your Ricks had their little catfight and…” He made a shooting motion with his free hand, grinning. “Oh, y-you should’ve seen the look on her face, it was _priceless_.”

Morty covered his face with his hands. His eyelids burned. His throat betrayed him, closing tightly in on itself until he had to fight for every breath.

Delta-5 clicked his tongue. “Classic Morty,” he said. “Look, kid, if it makes you feel any better, she didn’t care about y-you. You were just a replacement to hide her mistake so she wouldn’t have to jump dimensions.”

“You don’t know her…” said Morty.

“N-neither did you, apparently. Face it, kid, your ‘grandma’ was a liar. It’s just what we do. She probably made you feel s-special because it’s easier to keep you little shits in line when you care about us.”

He dissipated the laser wall around Morty. Delta-5 grabbed Morty again, this time crushing his arm with his grip. He yanked him off his feet and lifted him up by his arm.

Morty howled through the pain that shot up through his arm, clawing at Rick’s grip with his free hand.

Rick leaned in, and Morty caught a whiff of stale breath and cheap booze. “Wh-why do you think she puts your life in danger, huh? It’s because she could’ve replaced you i-if you ever got your stupid little ass killed. That’s h-how easy it is. She probably did it more times than you know, and you’d always think you were the original because we can stuff you full of fake memories. You and your dumb sister were just fucking pawns.”

Morty screwed his eyes shut, tears falling down his cheeks. “Y-you’re lying! Your fucking lying!”

“Don’t listen to him, Morty!” Summer’s voice cracked, but she was still trying to hold it together, for his sake. “He’s just trying to mess with you!”

He slammed Morty onto the metal chair, the iron cuffs fastening around his limbs. He could barely feel the blood flowing in his wrists or ankles. He struggled, screaming his head off as he writhed against the chair, but nothing he did made his cuffs loosen.

Morty stared down Delta-5 with the most intimidating glare he could manage as the older man began approaching with the syringe.

Summer started screaming his name. He heard something sizzle, and a yelp from his sister that he assumed came from her slamming against the laser wall.

“K-keep doing that,” said Delta-5, turning towards the wall. “It’ll totally help.” He took out a small tray of surgical tools like the ones that he’d seen his Mom use that one time he’d asked to know about her job for a school project. She’d gotten into far too much detail about what each tool was used for, and even had Morty watch her perform live surgery. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t gotten queasy when she’d finished.

That queasiness came back with a vengeance when he came over to Morty with a scalpel and a syringe. Before he could struggle even more, he felt a pinch in his neck. Something painful shot through his body, burning him up from the inside, and it was all he could do not to scream his lungs out.

“Aaand that should do it,” said Delta-5, placing the tool back on the tray. “Now we’re going to see what you’re really capable of, M-Morty.” He took a few steps back, smiling, eyes alight with excitement as he watched Morty.

Morty’s skin started feeling too suffocating, as if it was an extra-small t-shirt clinging to his torso that he needed to get out of it, at all costs. His body seemed to agree, because he began to expand, bones crunching and grinding as his skin stretched and stretched.

It wasn’t just his body that began to change. It felt as if somebody else had shoved almost all of his coherent thoughts into the trash and was adding fuel to a fire that spread so fast Morty couldn’t have stopped it if he had wanted to.

All that was left was his raw, unbridled rage towards his grandmother, C-137, Delta-5, and the lot of them. They were all the same, said his new thoughts, pitiful, emotionally detached gods that couldn’t be bothered to care about anything else but their own interests.

He’d been an idiot. How could he have thought that Ricki was capable of changing? She was the reason he and Summer had almost gotten killed, she was the reason his mother had been abandoned and hell, she was the reason this was happening to him right now. 

“Th-that’s right, Morty, you little shit. Keep getting pissed, it’ll only make you stronger.” Delta-5 laughed as Morty began growing extra limbs that tore through his skin while Morty howled on like a rabid animal. “Oh, this is great! Finally, I’ll be able to give that little shit what he wants. I-I’ll be rewarded. I’ll be able to live in a penthouse suite, g-get my own portal gun! I’ll never…I’ll never have to stay on that Citadel again—”

Morty broke his restraints.

Delta-5 stopped laughing.

Morty sniffed the air. He could taste sweat. He could taste the fear coming off of Delta-5 in waves, off his _prey_.

Morty lunged.

*

“J-jeez, what a basic-ass facility. There is like, n-no imagination here whatsoever.”

Ricki could agree on that. The facility was a simple building, the front door leading to a single, long hallways barely long enough for the two of them to walk in. The walls and floor were made of what she assumed to be steel.

A few panels opened, revealing large turrets. They opened fire immediately, only to have the bullets ricochet back to them thanks to Ricki’s shield. They kept walking, even as turret after turret emptied a literal bullet storm upon them.

“I c-can’t believe this idiot is the one who ended up blowing off my head,” said Ricki. “This is his defense system? The Galactic Federation had better shit than this five years ago.”

“They’re stolen from the Federation,” said Rick, glancing at the piles of scrap metal as they passed them. “Which is sooo lame if that’s the case. N-no wonder he didn’t—urrppp—pop a cap in you sooner. This asshole probably relies on other people doing the heavy lifting.”

They reached the end of the corridor and turned a corner. Nothing fired at them. The hallway was eerily quiet and identical to the last, except for a few extra panels located at the top of the walls.

Rick rolled his eyes. “Th-this is pathetic.”

Ricki stopped. “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

“That ominous scratching noise that’s coming closer.”

Rick glanced at the panels around them. “L-looks like Delta-5 may have something else up his sleeve.”

“What experiments was this guy up to again? All I know is that it was something about splicing Mortys.”

“Look for yourself,” said Rick, grabbing something from his coat.

Ricki did.

In her lifetime, Ricki had witnessed a lot of gruesome things. She’d hidden under tables during a systematic “cleansing” ritual at the age of 20, watched a small village commit ritualistic suicide, and had ran away barefoot and bleeding through her wrists with a group of cannibalistic rapist hot on her heels, among other memorable situations. And even having been through shit like that, the sight in front of her was definitely going to be on Ricki’s list of memories she would consider erasing.

The things were pouring from the walls, some of them more rat than human, others more rat, and somewhere even some combination of animals that just should never have been put together in the first place, like a 5-year-old had emptied a box of animal taxidermy parts and glued them together. All of them screeched or growled as they faced them. All their eyes were empty and feral. All of them had Morty’s eyes.

Ricki’s forcefield materialized as the creatures began crowding over them, screeching and ramming into it.

“This sick fuck…” she shuddered. “That’s what’s he’s doing?”

Rick’s face was impassive. He took out his blaster. “Well, this is going to haunt Morty’s nightmares. I-I might have to use a mindblower, knowing the little shit.”

It was going to haunt _hers_ , but she kept that to herself. “There must be a way to…”

“Revert them?” He stared at her, his forehead creases deepening. “Y-you’re kidding me, right? These poor bastards are too far gone.”

She knew he was right, but it didn’t stop the lump in her throat.

Rick scoffed, turning towards the horde. “Wh-what, did you forget to fire a gun while jacking yourself off on your high-horse?”

Ricki glared at Rick, firing a shot through her forcefield right into the nearest creature’s head. “Don’t patronize me, I can push you out of my forcefield, _asshole_.”

A loud, scream rang throughout the facility.

Rick began running down the hall, and Ricki followed suit. “Hurry the hell up! I-if you want character development so badly g-go and wait for season 5 like the rest of the world.”

They came to a closed door at the end of a hall and exchanged nods. Rick kicked open the door, blaster up.

A rat jumped at Ricki. She braced herself, only to watch it get shot through one of its many necks. Morty C-137 stepped over, holding a small blaster. “Rick! A-and Ricki! W-we thought you were dead...”

“Not anymore,” she said.

Rick glanced around the lab, unimpressed, before acknowledging Morty. “There you are, you little turd. I-I almost thought I’d have to clone you.”

Morty C-137 went over to Rick, shoulders squared. He punched Rick square in the belly, much to Ricki’s delight and confusion.

The old man coughed, hunching over. “Ow! What the fuck?”

“Y-y-you let Summer die!” said Morty, shaking. “A-after everything that happened…”

“Morty,” said Rick.

“No, Rick! I-I’m tired of hearing your excuses! S-Summer trusted you a-a-and now she’s dead! C-crushed under a cave and shit!”

“What are you talking about, I sent her back home in a portal when the cave collapsed, you idiot!”

Morty shut his mouth. His cheeks flushed pink. “O-oh.”

“Yeah, b-bet you feel real stupid now,” he snapped. “D-doubting me again, Morty? R-really?”

“Oh, give it a rest,” said Ricki. She noticed a gash on C-137’s arm. She bent down to his level, examining it. “Jesus, what the hell happened to you?”

Morty blinked at Ricki. He shuffled his feet. “Uh…just got bit by a monster? L-look, I’m not your Morty, so, uh…”

“Yeah, get your own grandson, Mortysnatcher, this one’s mine,” said Rick.

“The skin on his arm is rotting,” she said, sharply. “If you don’t do something about it, there won’t be a Morty standing here.”

“Wait, what?” Morty C-137 stared at his wound, eyes wide with panic.

“G-great, n-now he’s freaking out, l-look what you did.” Rick grabbed Morty’s shoulder and pulled him away from where Ricki was. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t you have other shit to worry about?”

“Rick, w-w-what are you going to do about this?” Morty C-137 gestured to his bleeding arm. “I-I can’t feel anything! A-am I gonna die?”

Rick sighed in exasperation. He plopped a pill onto Morty’s palm and shoved it towards him. “Just take this pill and shut up, for fuck’s sakes, it only grazed you. If it had sunk it teeth in, th-that would’ve been a different story.”

Morty swallowed the pill. His arm stopped bleeding.

Rick took out his healing salve and injected his grandson’s arm. The gashes mended in a matter of moments

“There, see? I-I didn’t come all this way j-just for you to die, that’d be a waste of my time.”

“Speaking of,” said Ricki, glancing around the room. “Where’s Summer? A-and Morty?”

Morty C-137 avoided her eyes. “Your Morty ran off, a-and so did your Summer.”

Ricki ran her hands through her hair. “What? Why would they do that?”

Rick popped his lips. “I can think of a few reasons…”

“Rick, shut up for five seconds,” said Morty C-137. He turned to Ricki. “I-I hate to be the one to break it to you, b-but your grandson is gone.”

Getting stabbed in the chest would’ve felt less painful. She sucked in air through her teeth. “What are you talking about?”

“He turned into one of those things,” said C-137, gesturing at one of the dead monsters. “A-and he went haywire and attacked Delta-5, b-but he also attacked me. I-I don’t think he’s human anymore.”

Rick burped. “W-well, if I were you, I’d cut your losses. I-it’s not like you can’t find another Morty.”

“Rick!” Morty snarled. “H-how can you be that insensitive?”

Ricki took a deep breath. “Which way did he go?” said Ricki.

Morty pointed down the hall. “I-I don’t know if they’re still here, he probably has a portal gun…”

“He’s still here,” she said. “He’s set a field to prevent anybody from teleporting away from the facility, and we didn’t see him on our way over.” Ricki smiled down at Morty. “Thanks for the info, kid. Take care of yourself.”

She may as well have been speaking another language with the expression Morty was giving her.

“What, y-you’re actually going to try and save your grandson?” said Rick. He almost sounded like he felt sorry for her, and she wanted to punch his teeth out just for that. “H-have you seen those things? You’d have better luck adopting a feral hog and putting a yellow t-shirt and a wig on it. This isn’t a _Disney_ movie. Your hope isn’t going to do anything but get you turned into mincemeat.”

Ricki walked away from him.

“What, no clever comeback?” he called out.

She refused to look back. “I already told you, Rick. You won. You got what you want. Enjoy it.” 

She ran, following the trail of corpses littering the halls left and right.

*

My [Tumblr](https://introvert-no-chameleon.tumblr.com/).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all didn't really think I'd killed off the star of the show before the big climax, did you? 
> 
> That aside, writing this chapter almost destroyed my sanity, along with the urge to finish this fic. I have at least ten different ways this chapter would've gone, and almost fifty pages of drafts for this thing. 
> 
> Sometimes I wonder why I do this to myself.


	4. Ricki and Morty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh my god.” Morty recoiled where he sat, back pressed against the couch. He wrenched the goggles from his face as if it was a facehugger. His chest rose and fell erratically.  
> “What?” Rick said, hoping he didn’t sound concerned.  
> “R-Rick, y-you need to see this!”  
> Rick made no effort to pick up the googles.  
> Morty let out an exasperated groan. He snatched the goggles and shoved it into Rick’s hands. “T-turn the setting back to when Ricki’s Morty died.”  
> “That’s what you were looking at? I-I already told you…”  
> “Do it or I’m telling Mom you offered Summer drugs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ricki is faced with a choice, and victory comes with a heavy price. Things get real in this last chapter, broh.

Summer Smith wasn’t a squeamish girl. Between adventuring with Ricki and having to deal with her family’s fucked-up behavior, she’d gotten used to some pretty weird shit. Hell, she’d once had to set another version of herself being controlled by parasitic cacti on fire and did so without hesitation. She hadn’t even lost sleep over it (although the same couldn’t be said for Morty). But after being forced to watch her younger brother metamorphosize into a walking nightmare orgy of rat and human body parts, she realized that maybe she’d given herself too much credit.

Delta-5 had taken cover behind one of the metal torture chairs when Morty broke through his restraints. He began taking shots at Morty, but they were barely breaking his hide. Morty leaped on the wall of the lab and screeched, the sound as pleasant as nails dragging on a chalkboard, and tackled Delta-5 into the laser wall separating Summer and the other Morty from the rest of them.

Delta-5 screamed, his body convulsing as it made contact with the wall. The clothes on his back burned away, and soon his skin was sizzling. Summer covered her nose, overwhelmed by the smell of burnt flesh.

The laser wall fizzled out. Delta-5 collapsed a few feet away from Summer. She kicked him in the face without hesitation, watching his head snap back from the impact and blood spatter on the floor and her shoe. “That’s for my brother, you freak!”

Summer scanned the room for anything else she could use to bash his head in, when she came face-to-face with Morty. Her breath caught in her throat. Up close, she could pick out a few details she hadn’t noticed before, like how Morty now had three different mouths, one on his human face, one on a rat snout protruding from under it, or the fact that she could see patches of hair where there normally shouldn’t have been any. He hissed from different mouths around his body, almost as still as she was. 

“G-get back!” Morty C-137, pointing a blaster at her brother. “Summer, run!”

Her shoes mind as well have been two blocks of cement, because she couldn’t bring herself to move them.

Morty blinked his eyes in a slow, unsynchronized motion. He turned away from her, noticing Morty C-137 aiming in their direction. His hissing turned into a couple of hellish shrieks. The hair on his body stood on end.

Morty C-137’s grip on the blaster tightened. His mouth set into a thin line, he aimed at one of Morty’s heads.

“Wait!” Summer held up a hand to stop him just as he shot around. Morty’s new skills apparently included some super fast speed, because Summer was flung down and out of harms’ way before she knew what was happening. Some blood spattered on Summer’s back. She glanced up to see Morty.

He hadn’t gotten shot in any of the heads, but he had a large chunk of skin blown out. The skin was already starting to mend itself.

“Don’t kill him, I-I think he’s trying to protect me,” she said, getting back up on her feet.

“A-are you crazy? H-h-he’s a feral monster—”

Morty took that moment to claps his jaws around her shirt and lift her up like a tiny kitten. She’d underestimated how big he’d gotten, because he managed to balance himself on a few legs and limbs in order to tower over Morty C-137 and lift her feet far enough from the ground that she couldn’t even get the tips of her toes to reach it.

He swiped at C-137, who yelped. The blaster clattered on the ground. Morty managed to catch him with another swipe of claws, this time slashing into the meat of his arm. C-137 wobbled back, landing on his ass. Blood covered his arm, gushing from his wound.

“Morty, stop!” Summer grabbed a hold of one of his arms. “Focus on him, he’s the one that hurt you.” She pointed at where Delta-5 should’ve been. Instead, there were bloodstains and no Delta-5.

Morty stopped staring down Morty C-137. He sniffed the air. He hissed again, and before Summer could say anything, he ran out the doorway, still holding onto her. Her head bobbed up and down on the rough ride. It took all her efforts not to bite her tongue off.

“Morty, put me down!” She slapped at one of his faces. One of her fingers poked an eye. He winced, tossing her away.

The landing was rough, but she’d had worst, just a bruised knee.

Morty was wiping at his injured face with multiple arms. Hunched over and making soft, whimpering noises, Summer was taken back to all the times she’d found Morty in a similar position, especially in the middle of a bad panic attack.

“Morty?”

Morty raised his heads.

Summer shivered. She wanted to step away, but she pushed that urge down. Instead, she patted one of his heads. It felt awkward, but Morty hadn’t bitten her hand off yet, so she considered it a good sign. “I-it’s okay, Morty. I’m here.”

She spied a closet that looked out of place in the entire facility devoid of anything aside from steel and nightmare rat monsters, but she supposed even mad scientists had to put their cleaning supplies somewhere.

She opened the door and shoved all the mops and brooms out. There was some junk, including a chunk of metal that was roughly the size of a baseball bat. She took it.

“Okay, Morty. Get inside, I’m going to find a way to fix this.”

Morty stayed put.

She nudged him towards the closet. He made a gurgling sound.

“Quit being an ass, Morty.”

She began shoving him, putting her weight into it. He took tentative steps towards it. “It’s…dangerous…for…you…”

As soon as he got in, he hunched over in order to fit inside. Kicked puppies were less pitiable than him. He pulled at her pant leg.

Summer gave him a strained smile. “Just…stay calm, okay? There has to be a cure or something around here.”

The logic was so thin it was transparent. But she couldn’t just not try. She’d wing it. That’s what Ricki always did. It worked for her, so why couldn’t this work for Summer?

“I’ll take care of it. Stay here.”

She closed the door, ignoring the look on his face.

*

Rick watched his counterpart run off like some sort of R-rated Star Wars protagonist off on a hopeless mission. It was pathetic. What kind of a Rick goes through so much trouble when she could easily just get a free one from the new Citadel, or just get one from a similar reality? It was like going through the effort of saving a dying goldfish instead of pawning over the 10 bucks to get a new one.

Morty didn’t share his sentiment, but he expected that. “Wh-what are you doing? Y-you’re not even going to help?”

Rick tried to get another swing from his flask, only to come up empty. A single, pitiful drop touched his tongue. He scowled at his flask as if doing so would magically refill it. Actually, now that he thought about it, why hadn’t he created a flask that magically refilled itself? He’d put a pin on that. “W-why would I do that? Your fine, Summer’s fine, a-and I no longer gain anything by staying here.”

Morty glared at him. “This is part of your responsibility, Rick. I-I told you not to mess with this, a-and you did! So now y-you’ve gotta fix it!”

“Uh, I-I don’t _have_ to do anything in this situation, Morty. Now let’s go, I-I don’t want to miss the season 3 premiere of _Ball Fondlers_ , the show’s hiatus has lasted a year, a-and I’m dying to see if that cliffhanger is going to pay off or not.”

Morty squared his shoulders in a defiant pose that Rick had begun to see in him more and more, much to his displeasure. “I’m not budging Rick.”

Rick pointed his portal gun at Morty’s feet. “Yeah, l-like you get a choice in the matter.”

“A-aren’t you at least the smallest bit sorry about this whole thing?”

“Morty, that would require me to give a shit, wh-which I don’t.” He made a portal next to his grandson. “Now quit bitching and get in. Be thankful you didn’t e-end up like Morty D-312-A. Y-you know, you’re a really lucky Morty, a-all things considered. A lot of them would’ve croaked by now. G-good thing you have a smart Rick. You should be thanking me.”

He shoved Morty in the portal just as the little shit opened his mouth to say something else. He went in right after him. They landed in front of the couch, back in the Smith household’s living room. Rick strolled right past a scowling Morty and went into the kitchen. The house was empty, so he was able to get a good bottle of bourbon from Jerry’s “secret” hiding spot in the upper cabinet behind the bran flavored cereal without having somebody get on his case about it.

He went back into the living room to find Morty messing around with his Interdimensional Googles.

Rick heaved a purposely loud, drawn-out sigh. “What are you doing with those?” He plopped onto the sofa, stretching out and hearing a few bones pop. He slumped back, taking a nice, leisure sip out of the bourbon. Jerry may have been an idiot, but at least the man had good taste when it came to some of his drink choices.

Morty turned the dial a few times. “Checking something. Why do you care?”

Heavy footsteps came towards them. Summer came in, holding up her phone as she stomped towards Rick. “Where the hell were you? I’ve been calling you two non-stop for, like, an hour! I thought you got crushed to death!”

Rick burped. “I had to save your idiot brother from getting spliced like a lab rat.”

Summer furrowed her brow. “What? The hell are you talking about?”

“Turns out the Rick that was shot in the video actually survived and blew Ricki’s head off and took her grandkids to experiment on them. I-it’s really soap-opera-y, i-if you ask me.”

“She’s dead?” said Summer.

Rick waved off her concern. “O-oh, no, she’s fine, she just jumped into a new body. I-I mean, she’s p-probably currently walking into to certain death right now because her grandson was turned into an abomination of nature, b-but that’s not one me.”

Summer put her hands on her hips. “This is literally _all_ on you.”

Rick sat up. “Wh-what, the two of you are paragons of virtue now? J-just a week ago you idiots were high on alien brake fluid. A-also, you’re the one who broke her shield, s-so if you _really_ think about it…”

“Oh my god.” Morty recoiled where he sat, back pressed against the couch. He wrenched the goggles from his face as if it was a facehugger. His chest rose and fell erratically.

“What?” Rick said, hoping he didn’t sound concerned.

“R-Rick, y-you need to see this!”

Rick made no effort to pick up the googles.

Morty let out an exasperated groan. He snatched the goggles and shoved it into Rick’s hands. “T-turn the setting back to when Ricki’s Morty died.”

“That’s what you were looking at? I-I already told you…”

“Do it or I’m telling Mom you offered Summer drugs.”

Summer shot daggers at Morty, but she kept her mouth shut.

Rick flipped him off, but put the goggles on. He adjusted the settings. “Wh-whatever, this is just going to be a waste of…”

Whatever he meant to say died on his lips as he watched the scene that played out in front of him.

When he finished, he dropped the goggles on the couch next to him.

“Grandpa…?” said Summer, frowning at Rick. “What’s going on?”

Rick rubbed his face. He cursed under his breath, punching coordinates into his portal gun. He pointed a finger at Morty. “Not. A. Word.”

He got into the portal.

*

Ricki reached the end of the corridor in a matter of minutes. There was nothing to note on the way over; even the security measures had lessened. She entered a large chamber that would’ve felt right at home in an _Alien_ film. There was barely any light source, just inky darkness only occasionally interrupted by the faint green glow of cloning vats.

Upon closer inspection, she discovered not a Rick clone, but a Morty floating inside, expression peaceful. It wasn’t doing much to ease her nerves. There were dozens of these vats, all lined up on both sides of the room. As she walked in, she began to see different Mortys in different stages of transformation. Some only had a rat tail or a few patches of fur. Others were so deformed that it astounded Ricki that they were still alive at all, even if they were in comatose.

“Geez, living up the sci-fi clichés to the max, aren’t we?”

A voice, familiar yet different enough for Ricki to be able to separate from Sanchez, spoke from somewhere in the darkness overhead. “They’re clichés for a reason. Sometimes, it’s good to rely on an old classic.”

Ricki covered her eyes, already aware of where this was going. Lights clicked on. A grated platform that had been hidden in the darkness held a smug Delta-5. He leaned casually against the railing, smiling.

“Rick D-312-A. I’d say I’m surprised to see you, b-but that would make it sound like I wasn’t prepared. It’s called foresight, y-you should try it sometime.”

Ricki’s jaw tightened. “If you want to die painlessly tonight, I’d suggest you stop calling me that.”

“Bold words coming from such a reckless and irrational Rick.”

He smirked when she flinched at the name. “T-tell me, how does it feel to know that everything you risked your life for meant nothing? You lost the thing you risked so much for, risked getting found out by the Citadel, a-and went through the trouble of using Mindblowers on your family. All these lies, and you end up here. With your grandson, at m-my mercy—”

Ricki shot three consecutive rounds at Delta-5’s chest, watching him flinch and grunt in pain as each blast hit its mark. He gasped, leaning back on the railing. She shot at him again, but he’d finally gotten some common sense. He dropped up a small metallic plate on the ground. It folded out in front of him, making a thin, murky-white shield.

Ricki shot at it once. The blast lingered on the surface of the projected shield, then slowly fizzled out, reminiscent of a rock getting sucked into quicksand.

“Wow,” she said in faux wonderment. “T-that could take maybe a _minute_ of me shooting at it until it breaks.”

Delta-5 clutched at the rails behind him, sweat pouring down his brows, face reddened as his body began to mend itself. When it was over, he gasped, straightening up. “I-I gotta hand it to you. You are one persistent bitch.”

“And you’re an idiot.” She gestured at some of the Mortys floating in the tubes. “D-do you even realize that this is completely inefficient? Y-you could easily just make an army of robots in half the time it took however long this _Resident Evil_ crap did. Or y’know, make a bomb like everyone else.”

Delta-5 grit his teeth at her. “You j-just all want to take away the artistry of it all, d-don’t you? I-it’s all robots now, th-that’s all it is. Every creature I make here is a unique mix of DNA. They’re meant to look like this. They’re not meant to _destroy_ a civilization, they’re meant to _terrorize_ it.”

“Yet, oddly enough, the Council hasn’t blacklisted you.” Ricki folded her arms across her chest. “I wonder, h-how many dicks did you have to suck to be able to get all the resources for this bullshit?”

Delta-5 clutched the edge of the railing until his knuckles turned bone-white. He smiled in a way that suggests anything but goodwill. “I was supposed to recruit you, y-you know.”

Ricki raised her eyebrow. “Really?”

Delta-5 paced around on the railing overhead, each step causing a clang of metal that echoed throughout the chamber. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, b-but the Citadel has a new president.”

“I don’t care.”

He kept talking as if she hadn’t spoken. “And there are going to be some changes—”

Ricki shot into the shield until he stopped talking. “Take your Bond Villain speech and shove it up your ass, Delta-5. Where the hell is my grandson?”

Delta-5 looked as if he’d had an entire 20-minute speech planned and Ricki had stomped all over his monologuing aspirations. He threw his hands up in the air. “Fine! Y-you want to kill the moment? I-I’ve got something better.”

He blew a whistle. The shrill cry of it barely registered to Ricki’s ears, but it certainly seemed to stir up the Mortys around her. Their eyes snapped open, and all the moment needed was a scare chord to complete the B-grade horror movie theme.

They popped out of their vats, glass shattering all around and liquid spilling all over the floor.

Ricki kept her eyes up, mostly to avoid the awkward situation of being surrounded by dozens of naked 12-year-olds, but also to avoid having to watch the faces of what would soon be more dead kids.

They began to writhe and transform into the monstrosities she’d witnessed when she’d stepped into the facility. Some screams were more human than others; most were just ear-piercingly awful.

“You make me fucking sick,” she said, raising her blaster. “Y-you could at least give them some pants, sicko.”

“Why waste t-the effort and resources? Half of them w-won’t even live past the week.”

“Grandma! Behind you!”

Ricki whirled around to see a monster get smacked mid-air. Summer came running towards her, holding a long piece of broken metal. 

“Summer!”

The teen went over to her, catching her breath as she doubled over, hands on her knees. She smiled at Ricki as if her grandma was an angel descending from Heaven itself. “You’re alive!”

“You think I wouldn’t be?”

Summer wiped the corner of her eye. “You took long enough.”

“Yeah, yeah. Have you seen your brother?”

“He tried getting me away from here,” she said. “He kept dragging me away, but I managed to get him to stay in a storage closet.” Summer swallowed, her face pale. “Grandma, he’s—”

“I know.”

“You can fix him, right?”

Ricki stared at the mob around them. She gave Summer a blaster similar to the one she’d had before. “Summer, y-you take the ones behind me, I’ll take the rest.”

“Grandma—”

“Summer, right now, I-I need to keep you alive, alright? For once, j-just listen to me.”

After a moment, Summer huffed. “Fine.” She held her gun up, holding it with trembling hands.

“S-shoot to kill,” said Ricki. “Do you understand?”

Something in her granddaughter hardened. She shot the first rat monster with a grimace.

Ricki felt a deep sorrow take a hold of her under the surface of her cool façade. Summer was so damn _young_. When had Ricki let it go this far, that this hardness became the norm for her granddaughter?

How could she have let it get to this point?

“How sweet,” said Delta-5. “But I haven’t even gotten to the main event yet. Let’s call in the star of today’s show, shall we?” He blew on the whistle one last time.

At first, nothing happened. Then, came the noise, claws tapping against metal. Then her grandson came in, larger than the other poor kids Ricki had dealt with so far, and it was all she could do but not drop her weapon.

Morty tore into the other without provocation, making a beeline towards Ricki and Summer. Feral, snarling and salivating, anything he got his fangs on was torn into pieces. The mob thinned faster than Ricki could fathom.

How the hell would she be able to fix _that_?

“Grandma?” Summer’s quivering voice snapped her back to the present. “Grandma, Morty’s breaking the shield!”

Ricki swallowed. She pressed a button that caused an electric current to run throughout the dome. Morty was hit with the volts, yet he barely flinched. If anything, he began slamming against the dome with more force than he’d used before. It was a miracle that his skull hadn’t shattered.

Ricki rummaged through her pockets, trying to think about what she could use to pacify her grandson without killing him.

“What are you doing? Hurry up!” Summer was firing at a couple of monsters that had survived the massacre, not that it would matter. They’d be dead in seconds if Morty caught them. “Just pull out something to turn him back!”

Ricki squeezed her eyes shut. “I. I don’t. I don’t have anything.”

Oh, god. She was going to lose her grandson again.

Summer stopped pointing her blaster at the monsters around her. Her arms slumped to her side as she dropped the weapon. Her brows knit and she grabbed Ricki’s shoulders. “You have to.” She shook Ricki. “You always do! Y-you’re the smartest woman in the universe! You said so!”

Ricki tried drawing up something, any plan, but she was drawing a blank.

No, that wasn’t true. She was remembering _that_. She couldn’t be, though. Not if she wanted to survive this.

A crack in her shield stretched, thin lines spreading throughout the light blue dome, just like _those rivulets of blood pouring down the seat cushions of the booster seat_.

Summer screamed at her, but all Ricki could hear was faint ringing.

_She just left for a moment, she just went to get the keys, how was she supposed to know—_

_The car came out of no-where, some dumb drunk kid—_

_Right on the front lawn, how the fuck could she predict **that** —_

“Grandma!”

Morty’s face was inches away from her. The shield must’ve broken completely at some point. It’d take too long to create a new one.

“Summer,” said Ricki. “G-get out and go to the ship. It should have an autopilot that will take you straight home.”

“No way, I am _not_ leaving! Morty won’t hurt me, let me calm him down.”

Morty snarled when Summer came too close. His movements became twitchy and erratic as if he was literally doing everything, he could to hold himself together. Veins popped at the side of his forehead.

“We’ll be right behind you,” said Ricki.

“You’re just saying that so I leave,” said Summer. “It’s not going to work. I’m staying!”

“Damn it, now is not the time for you to—”

“Boooringgggg.” Delta-5 let out an exaggerated yawn. “Let’s get this over with, huh? I have a report to file.”

He blew the whistle one last time.

Morty tensed. With a wail, two more limbs broke out from the skin on his back. He was foaming at the mouth, droplets of saliva and acid falling everywhere around Ricki. She pushed Summer back. Only a few drops fell onto Ricki’s right arm, but it stung like a thousand red ants burrowing under his skin.

“Fucking hell!”

Ricki set her blaster to the highest voltage setting and shot it at Morty. Once again, he shrugged it off.

“Stop it, you’re hurting him!” said Summer, grabbing at Ricki’s free arm.

“I’m t-trying not to!”

“It’s not working!”

Morty rammed into Summer, knocking her back a few feet. She stumbled into a pile of dead monsters, eyes wide and filled with fear.

Morty got ready to pounce again.

“No!”

Ricki ran in between them. She grabbed Morty as tightly as she could and trapped them both in her shield. Morty pinned her down to the ground, snarling over her. She pulled out a thin, metal stick that she lodged between the rat jaws. It expanded until he was unable to close his mouth.

Delta-5’s laugher rang in Ricki’s ears.

Ricki took her blade out and slashed at one of Morty’s hands. Blood poured on her lab coat the taste of copper now thick on her tongue.

“Grandma, please, don’t kill him!” Summer banged her fist on the bubble.

“He’s going to kill us both if I don’t stop him!”

“I don’t care, he’s my little brother!”

“Oh, relax,” said Delta-5’s voice. “She could just get you another one.”

“Shut up!” said Summer. “She wouldn’t do that!”

Ricki shoved his rat face as far away from her as she could. A fist fell on her stomach. She kept her grip on him, ignoring the throbbing pain in her belly.

“I’m open to any options!” said Ricki.

Summer raked her hands through her hair. “You have tranquilizers, don’t you?”

Ricki swatted another claw away from her face. “Here goes nothing.” She grabbed a syringe from her coat. “It’s going to be okay Morty.” She plunged it into one of his necks.

Just as she was about to inject the liquid, a tiny alarm beeped from her watch. Two zeros blinked on the screen.

“Shit.” Her arm went limp and fell next to her on the ground. Less than a moment later, her other arm followed suit.

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t deactivate her shield.

Morty broke the metal stick in half. His long, jagged teeth hovered inches over her face.

“Morty,” said Ricki, struggling to keep her tone as calm as possible. “C-come on, buddy. It’s me, r-remember?”

She didn’t receive an answer. She did, however, get those long, dagger-teeth sunken into her arm. Explosions of stars burst behind her eyes. Ricki had gotten stabbed more times than she could count, and this wasn’t even the first time she’d been bitten by a monster, but whatever was in those teeth and claws was meant to cause a hell of a lot of pain while killing their victims.

A sadist _and_ a child abuser. Delta-5 was the total package.

Her shield began to flicker around her. Someone was shooting at it, not that it would matter. Chipping away at cement with a kitchen knife would be more effective. Even a stronger gun would take minutes, and Ricki doubted she live to see the end of this one.

In her dazed state, her head rolled up, and she was met with Morty’s face once again. Well, the transformation had made it look like more of a mask than a face, but it was still his, even if he didn’t know it.

“I guess this is my fault,” she said, more at herself than Morty. Despite the profane amount of pain she was in, she wasn’t screaming or even raising her voice. An odd sense of calm overcame her. She was pretty sure that was her brain entering that Nirvana-Esque stage before death but fuck it. She’d take it.

“So, Morty. I guess this is the end of the line. Not how I expected this outing to end, not gonna lie. I just figured that I’d charge in guns blazing, maybe wisecrack, y’know. Kinda like in Red. Th-the movie, not the comic that the movie is based on, wh-which is actually pretty bleak…I-I’m getting off-topic here.”

It could have been her imagination, but Morty’s expression seemed less feral. There was a spark of intelligence in his eyes.

“L-look, Morty, before die painfully, I want you to know that I’m sorry. I-I should’ve stayed in my lane a-and just taken you two somewhere safer, and I should’ve told you and the family the truth. I want to say something like “I didn’t want to hurt you”, b-but realistically we both know I was just a coward. I’ve made too many mistakes, a-and I lost most of my family because of it. I…didn’t want to lose the rest of it.”

Ricki’s vision began to blur. Her eyelids felt heavier and heavier, her words becoming slurred. “You…h-have every right to…to want to kill me…just…look after yourself…a-and Summer…you’re both good kids and y-you didn’t deserve this and…”

Morty dropped her.

Ricki sucked in air through her teeth. “Aaaand I feel a whole new wave of pain.”

One of Morty’s human hands took her wrist and pressed the button to de-activate the shield. With another hand, he plunged the syringe in his neck. In mere seconds, he was back to being a kid. His eyes were bloodshot, his clothes were ripped, and he smelled like rat droppings, but he was at least human.

Ricki would deny this to anyone who asked, but at that moment she silently thanked god for whatever miracle it was that made Morty go back to normal.

Morty sniffled, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “Y-you really meant all of that?”

Ricki smirked. “Yeah.”

Summer rushed over to Morty, leaping over monsters to reach her brother. She hugged him tighter than Ricki had ever seen Summer hug her sibling. Ricki could count the times she’d seen Summer even address Morty with anything other than disinterest or contempt on her fingers.

She had a feeling that was about to change.

Summer gasped, putting a hand to her mouth as she noticed the state Ricki was in. “Grandma, your arm!”

“Yeah, uh, I’m not going to look at that right now. Sweetie, g-get the case with the syringes with the green liquid and inject that shit into my good arm before grandma goes into comatose.”

Summer quickly obeyed. After the liquid took effect, Ricki moved her stiff fingers. Her entire body was still numb, but she could move. She pulled out a bottle with a nozzle attached to it filled with thick, yellow liquid. She sprayed it all over her bad arm. Only after she let it harden and she could no longer feel any sort of sensation from her bad arm did she bothered to take a peek.

It wasn’t good, to put it lightly. The flesh had turned purple, it smelled awful and it had pus. Ricki was glad she hadn’t eaten anything all day, because she probably would've thrown it up. “Well, that arm is fucked…but I’ll deal with that at home.”

Ricki saw the tail of his lab coat disappear around the corner of the doorway they came in. “Kids, stay here. I’ve got to finish this.”

They actually listened for once, staying huddled together.

She ran after Delta-5, who cursed as soon as he noticed Ricki hot on his heels.

Ricki shot a disk at his feet, her octo-coils wrapping around his legs. He fell flat on his face. He managed to shoot them off right as Ricki aimed at him. He dodged and shot back. The blast blew off her wristwatch.

She kept her blaster aimed at his head, and he did the same with his.

He took another shot. Ricki rolled out of the way, taken aback by her sudden lack of balance. In a moment of confusion, she wondered why her right arm wouldn’t respond, until she went back to staring at what was left of it. She dropped her blaster and managed to get her glove out to deflect Delta-5’s next shot.

“You really think you’re going to last like that? E-even if you get your shot, I’ll just regenerate.”

Ricki, for the first time in the entire week, felt a genuine smile crawl up her face. “Unless somebody were to disable your nanobots while you were focusing all of your attention on me, then shoot you. Preferably in the back of the head, b-but the dick works too.”

Delta-5 wavered. “T-that was incredibly specific—”

A hole was blasted into his head. He toppled over, his body twitching.

Rick Sanchez stood over it. “Never good at keeping his head on his shoulders, w-was he?”

Ricki snorted. “That was shit.”

“I’m a genius, not a comedian.”

She took out what looked like a small water gun. She pressed the button and dosed his body in flames. In a few moments, his skin and bones burned away until he was nothing but a pile of ash.

“You---urrrppp—should’ve used that first.”

Rick walked over, nonchalant, his foot nudging at the remnants of Delta-5.

“Would’ve been the same as shooting him if he still had the nanobots,” she said. “Thanks for the assist. D-didn’t think you’d come back.”

Rick narrowed his eyes at her. He wiped some bile from the corner of his mouth. “Don’t take it as anything but repaying a debt. I-I don’t like owing people things, it comes to bite me in the ass later.”

She awkwardly got to her feet, using the wall as a support.

Rick gestured at her injured arm. “You and your grandson have some bonding time?”

She glanced at the offending arm. “It doesn’t matter. He’d back to normal for now, at least.”

Rick raised his brow. “Hm.”

She sighed. “D-do me a favor and blast the arm off, I-I can’t get the angle from here.”

He shrugged and did it, leaving only the chunk connected to her shoulder intact. “You gonna just re-grow it?”

“Naw, I think I’ll just go with a robot arm. W-was thinking of doing it anyway.”

“Then all you’ll be missing is a robot eye and a talking AI, and you’re all set to be the protagonist in a standard post-apocalypse cyberpunk film.”

She did a half-shrug. “Guess so.” She picked up her blaster. “I’m guessing you saw what happened.”

“Wh-what makes you think I saw anything?”

““Settling a score?” Please, as if you’d give a shit.”

Rick rolled his eyes. “Fine. I did.” He cleared his throat. “That was…”

“If you’re going to make a joke about it—”

“It was bad, alright?”

Ricki blinked at him, clamping her mouth shut.

“I-I’m sorry it happened, if it’s any consolation,” he said, eyes glued to the floor. “Y-you couldn’t have known what would happen, y’know. That’s just how the multiverse is. Not even we can know everything about it.”

Ricki took a good look at the man in front of her. “You are…C-137, right?”

He shot her an unimpressed glare. “Just accept the stupid olive branch.”

“…Thanks.”

Rick turned away, radiating discomfort. “Yeah, yeah.”

He opened up a portal. He took one step, stopped, and turned to face her. “Is your Birdperson alive?”

“Last time I checked. Why wouldn’t he be?”

Rick turned back towards his portal. “If Summer ever gets a friend named Tammy, do yourself and him a favor and shoot a bullet through that chunk of ice she calls a heart.”

Ricki wanted to ask more, but she knew he was about at his limit of heartfelt conversations. “Noted.”

He took a step forward.

“Wait,” she said, making the words come out before she had time to regret what she was about to say. “We should keep in touch.”

Rick quirked his unibrow. “The hell for?”

“The Citadel might be a problem for both of us.”

“Y-you really think they’ll make a fuss about this asshole?” He gestured to where Delta-5’s ashes remained. “He was probably some blue-collar that got over-eager with his promotion. Th-they were gonna kill him anyway.

“I know _that_ ,” she said. “B-but I can’t shake the feeling that this isn’t over.”

“You’re being paranoid.”

“We’re both paranoid, that’s how we stayed alive this long.”

“Point taken. W-we can set the details later. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I-I need a fucking nap. G-good luck dealing with your family drama.”

He went into the portal. It closed behind him, popping out of existence.

Ricki lingered, staring at the pile of ashes for a good, long moment. She must’ve waited for at least five minutes just waiting and watching for even the smallest movement. Satisfied it was all finally over, she went to get her grandkids and go back home.

*

The jig was up.

Ricki had insisted on getting the kids’ wounds checked before they went to clean themselves up. As soon as she’d had finished tending to her grandkids and made sure that Morty’s condition was stable, their parents had stepped into the house, meeting three grimy, tired, and traumatized people.

“Dad,” Beth stood at the doorway, her face a picture of horror and shock. “What the hell happened to your _arm_?”

“What the hell happened to our _kids_?” Jerry stormed in up to Ricki, almost managing to be intimidating had it not been for the fact that Ricki had at least twelve different ways to kill him tucked away in her pockets. He jabbed a finger at her face. “We told you, no more dangerous Sci-Fi adventure bullshit! I’ve…I’ve had enough of this. Tomorrow we’re taking you and your things to a retirement home!”

Ricki unsuccessfully tried to suppress a snort. She could agree with Jerry on the kids thing, but if he thought he had any say in whether or not she stayed in a fucking house where old people went to wait for death while playing Bingo and fighting over the crappy TV remote in a living room that smelled like antiseptic, he obviously had another thing coming.

“Jerry!” Beth pushed his hand away from Ricki. “We are not making her move, she’s clearly in distress, probably from saving our kids.”

“Mom…” said Summer.

“And why do you think they needed saving in the first place?” Jerry gestured at Ricki. “They smell like they just came out of a bloodbath! She probably dragged them into some satanic ritualistic killings.”

“Dad!” said Summer, raising her voice in an admirable attempt to be heard.

“Wow,” said Ricki. “You have been watching way too much tv, Jerry.”

“Don’t try and change the subject!” he said.

“She can if she wants to, and she doesn’t have to explain herself, because she’s not going anywhere, you asshole!” said Beth.

Ricki rubbed small circles on her temples. “For fuck’s sake, shut up, both of you!” She said, in a sharp tone that cut through the argument, rendering both participants silent.

Beth stared, slack-jawed, at Ricki. Never had she raised her tone at Beth, not since her childhood on the rare occasion that she ended up scolding her for something.

Even Morty and Summer regarded the whole scene with wide eyes.

Ricki let herself enjoy the lack of screaming for a good, blissful moment. She took a deep breath in through her nose. “I think it’s time we all got some things straight around here. Jerry.” She turned towards her son-in-law, mentally gathering every ounce of willpower she had in order to spit out what she needed to say. “You. Are. Right.”

She could swear that the words alone were taking away five years from her lifespan. 

Jerry looked as if he’d expected her to stab his throat and she’d given him a bouquet of flowers instead. “I… _I am_?”

Ricki forced her words out through grit teeth. “I’m _not_ saying that again. But yes, it was my fault the kids ended up the way they did.”

“That’s bullshit!” Summer stood in front of her grandma, staring down her parents. “Grandma risked her life to save Morty and me from these freaks. She even had to come back in another body after her head got blown off!”

“Her what?” Beth grabbed fistfuls of her hair as if two seconds from tearing it out.

Ricki winced. “Not what I wanted to start with, Summer, but I appreciate the good intentions. And what happened still…falls on me.”

“Is that why you look less close to the grave than usual?” said Jerry, in his usual oblivious, Jerry way.

Christ, she hated Jerry.

“I’m ignoring that,” said Ricki. She cleared her throat. “I-I haven’t been honest with this family, and I think, if I-I want to be a part of it, it’s only fair that…you know everything.” She bit her bottom lip and chanced a look at her daughter.

She had those big, scared child-eyes that Ricki remembered from late nights of walking down the hallway and asking Ricki to look under her room for monsters. When Ricki would actually do something good for once and make her some warm milk and stay there explaining the likelihood of there not being monsters living in the house while Beth drifted off to sleep.

Ricki extended her hand to Beth. “S-sweetie, you may want to sit down.” She sighed, already wondering how quickly she’d need to pack up her lab after all was said and done. “Let me start with what happened when Morty was six weeks old.”

She began talking once the entire family sat down on the couch. She’d expected it to be hard, to be filled with emotional turmoil or give up and try to worm out of it, but there was something liberating about finally letting out what happened all those years ago. She spared them the details of that Morty’s accident. Not even Jerry deserved to have the mental image of his six-month infant son being crushed to death by burning metal and broken glass.

“So…my…original son…was killed by a drunk driver right outside this house?” said Beth. Her voice barely rose above a whisper. She’d managed to procure a bottle of wine in what felt like seconds from the kitchen and was drinking directly from it. Ricki would’ve been proud, had it not been for the circumstances. “A-and you…went to a dimension where a Rick was experimenting on his grandson, killed him, erased our memories, and brought back Morty.”

Ricki nodded, lips pressed together. “Heard about him when I was, ah, drinking in a bar on the Citadel. I-I was still going to, ah. Do the switch with an orphaned Morty. Y-you can petition that kind of thing.”

Ricki held her arms. “But these Ricks, they…they started talking about that shit, a-and I couldn’t stand the thought of somebody hurting Morty, y’know. A-and I wasn’t all there,” she said, gesturing at her own head. “Up here. So, there you have it. That’s…why that guy took Morty, and why I’m going to have to make up a more permanent cure. Shouldn’t be hard, I-I think I figured it out.”

She took in the sight in front of her. Summer had her knees to her chest, staring at the carpet as if it would give her some comfort. With her left hand, she had her younger brother pulled into a half-hug.

Morty had kept his attention on Ricki since the beginning. His face was as expressionless as she’d ever seen it.

Jerry just had his hands folded in front of his mouth, elbows on his knees, forehead creased.

Beth had a thousand-yard stare that Ricki could sympathize with far too easily. When she spoke up, her voice was surprisingly calm. “You hid that from us. Is that why you disappeared again after coming back?”

“It was…part of it. Trust me, sweetie, I-I-I know I owe you an explanation. For a lot of things, and I have no right to ask this, but…can you give me time? Or at least let me cure Morty.”

Jerry straightened up in his seat. He stared at Beth. “Well, that’s…a lot. What do you want to do?”

Beth stared at her bottle. “Morty’s health comes first.” She looked up at Ricki. “But after that. I…I need you to give us some space.”

“Mom, no!” Summer stopped hugging Morty. “Grandma’s a hero! She did all of that for us—”

“She had no right not to tell us,” said Beth, in a hushed, but firm tone. “Even if she thought she did what was best for us, it doesn’t matter. I can’t trust her with this family.”

It hurt. It hurt more and less than Ricki had thought. She smiled at Beth. “I-I’m proud of you, sweetie.” She rummaged through her coat until she found the memory gun. She took it out.

Morty tensed, wound up like a coil ready to spring at Ricki.

Summer’s eyes widened. “Wait—”

Ricki dropped the gun to the ground and stomped on it with her foot, crunching the wires and plastic bits under her heel.

Morty sighed in relief, sagging back against the sofa.

Ricki began walking to the garage. “I-I’ll let you know when the cure is ready.” She paused at the doorway. “J-just so we’re clear, I-I’ll move myself out, I’m not going to a retirement home and I _will_ electrocute anybody who tries to put me in one.”

She got into her lab, wiped something from the corner of her eye (sweat, it was _sweat_ ), and got to work. She heard hushed voices speaking in the distance and forced herself to get absorbed in the task at hand. It became more of a challenge than she’d expected, having only one hand to work with. She’d occasionally stop, trying to grab a tool or ingredient with her other hand, only to just blankly stare at the empty space where she’d usually set it down.

Then she’d get right back to work, reminding herself that she’d fix it soon.

Aside from those interruptions, time passed faster than she’d expected. By the time she finished, it was already past two in the morning. The lights were still one in the living room, so she assumed Morty was at least waiting for—

“Hey.”

Ricki straightened up at the sound of her grandson’s voice. He had gotten into his button-up pajamas, and he no longer reeked of sewer water. He walked into the lab, pulled up a stool, and sat on it.

“Hey,” she said. She pulled out the goggles she had on and placed them on the desk. She then showed him the vial of her concoction. “W-was just about to call you.”

Morty ignored it. His eyes darted in the direction of her gel-covered arm stump. “D-doesn’t that hurt?”

“Not right now.”

He squirmed in his seat. “D-did it hurt a lot when I…”

“Morty,” she said. “I-it doesn’t matter. It’s not your fault. I’ll stick on a robotic arm and it’ll be fine.”

“C-can’t you just, I-I dunno, grow one back?”

“That shit’s too complicated. It’s easier just to incorporate the metal.”

“You just want a cool robot arm.” He smirked just a bit.

“T-that too.”

Morty stretched out his hand to take the vial.

She gave it to him.

“B-bottom’s up,” he said. He drank it down. He shifted in his seat, face scrunching up. “A-am I supposed to be feeling a-all light-headed?”

“Just for a few seconds. The worst that should happen is that your body gets a little sluggish, maybe some mild vertigo. All of that should wear off in a week, tops.” She pressed a finger to her chin. “You might retain some…rat-like tendencies, fyi.”

“Like what?”

“Eh, small stuff, like the urge to maybe rummage through garbage and bite people. O-on the bright side, your sense of smell will probably be a lot better.”

Morty chuckled. “Th-that might be one of the least bad side-effects coming from something you made.”

Ricki laughed. “Can’t argue there.”

Morty’s expression sobered. “S-so, are you really leaving?”

Ricki sighed. “I’m not _leaving_ leaving. Just think of it as me moving to another neighborhood.”

Morty rubbed the back of his neck. “Y-y-you’re not gonna, like, move to another dimension or something like that?”

Ricki wanted to snap at him for suggesting that, but she reminded herself that she hadn’t exactly given him a reason not to think that. “Naw. I’ll probably rent an apartment. O-or make one, it depends on how I’m feeling when I get everything packed up.”

“Good. C-cause Mom would get r-really upset, y’know, i-i-if you left again.”

Ricki felt a twinge of guilt. “I know, Morty.”

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “A-and, Summer would miss you.”

“Can’t have that. S-she really seemed to be getting into adventuring.”

“Yup. She…she really looks up to you.”

“A huge mistake, honestly.”

Morty looked up at his grandma, and she realized he was tearing up. “M-maybe not a complete mistake.”

“Jeez, Morty.” Now it was Ricki’s turn to rub her neck. “Y-you know I’m not good with this emotion shit.”

He quickly wiped his tears. “J-just, don’t fall off the wagon, or some crap like that. I-I can’t be watching you, y-you’re an adult a-a-and that’s your responsibility.”

“Ugh.” Ricki got up, walked over to her grandson, and wrapped her arms around him. She expected the gesture to feel awkward, and it kind of was, but it still felt…nice to be able to offer some sort of comfort to her grandson for once. “It’ll be fine, y-you little idiot. I can teleport, I’ll be harassing your family daily again in no-time once your mother cools off.”

“What if Dad still doesn’t want you around?”

“Morty, w-we both know I have no respect for your father’s authority whatsoever.”

Morty sniggered.

Ricki ignored the very strong impulse to push his snotty nose away. She pretended she didn’t notice her grandson clutch at her lab coat, or cry in her shirt.

She also certainly was not shedding a few tears herself, certainly was not overcome with relief and grief and hope, all those emotions twisting together into one strange, intense moment. Ricki usually didn’t indulge these emotions, but. Well.

Just this once, she’d let it slide.

*

You already know what this [link](https://introvert-no-chameleon.tumblr.com/) is for. Go forth, nerds. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT. IS. DONE. My first finished and posted multi-chapter fic...wow. This was a bitch and a half to write, but I'm glad I finished. I may do some last edits, especially to fix some of those typos, but that's about it. I can now move on to Gravity Falls fics. Expect some Stanchez in your future, lovelies. 
> 
> A huge thanks to those of you who took the time to comment or give kudos, you guys helped me pull through this when I wanted to give up on it. It's not easy to outline, write, and self-edit a multi-chapter fic while dealing with some heavy-ass Imposter Syndrome and depression. So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

**Author's Note:**

> For anybody following the timeline, this fic happens just before the Season 4 finale of Rick & Morty and after my fic "Goodbye, Rick Sanchez". So if you haven't caught up with Season 4, there are some spoilers in this fic.


End file.
